“Naughty girl!” he exclaimed, laughing, although his eyes looked as if he were crying; and, acting upon the principle of retaliation less odious in love than in war, he tried to snatch a kiss to punish her.

“Stop that, Monsieur Marillac! you know very well what you promised me.”

“To love you forever, you entrancing creature,” said he, in the voice of a crocodile that sighs to attract his prey.

Reine pursed up her lips and assumed important airs, but, in order to obey the feminine instinct which prescribes changing the subject of conversation after too direct an avowal, with the firm intention of returning to it later through another channel, she said: 

“What were you doing just as I arrived?  You were so busy you did not hear me coming.  You were so droll; you waved your arms in the air and struck your forehead as you talked.”

“I was thinking of you.”

“But it was not necessary, in order to do that, to strike your head with your fist.  It must have hurt you.”

“Adorable woman!” exclaimed the artist, in a passionate tone.

“Mon Dieu! how you frighten me.  If I had known I would not have come here at all.  I must go away directly.”

“Leave me already, queen of my heart!  No! do not expect to do that; I would sooner lose my life—­”

“Will you stop! what if some one should hear you? they might be passing,” said Reine, gazing anxiously about her.  “If you knew how frightened I was in coming!  I told mamma that I was going to the mill to see my uncle; but that horrid old Lambernier met me just as I entered the woods.  What shall I do if he tells that he saw me?  This is not the road to the mill.  It is to be hoped that he has not followed me!  I should be in a pretty plight!”

“You can say that you came to gather berries or nuts, or to hear the nightingale sing; Mother Gobillot will not think anything of it.  Who is this Lambernier?”

“You know—­the carpenter.  You saw him at our house the other day.”

“Ah! ah!” said Marillac, with interest, “the one who was turned away from the chateau?”

“Yes, and they did well to do it, too; he is a downright bad man.”

“He is the one who told you something about Madame de Bergenheim.  Tell me the story.  Your mother interrupted us yesterday just as you began telling it to me.—­What was it that he said?”

“Oh! falsehoods probably.  One can not believe anything that he says.”

“But what did he tell you?”

“What difference does it make to you what is said about the Baroness?” replied the young girl, rather spitefully, as she saw that Marillac was not occupied in thinking of her exclusively.

“Pure curiosity.  He told you then that he would tell the Baron what he knew, and that the latter would give him plenty of money to make him keep silent?”

“It makes no difference what he told me.  Ask him if you wish to know.  Why did you not stay at the chateau if you can think only of the Baroness?  Are you in love with her?”