what they might she would never become the wife of Adrian Urmand.  Madame Voss had told her husband that when Marie saw the things purchased for her wedding coming into the house, the very feeling that the goods had been bought would bind her to her engagement.  Marie had thought of that also, and was aware that she must lose no time in making her purpose known, so that articles which would be unnecessary might not be purchased.  On that very morning, while the men had been up in the mountain, she had sat with her aunt hemming sheets;—­intended as an addition to the already overflowing stock possessed by M. Urmand.  It was with difficulty that she had brought herself to do that,—­telling herself, however, that as the linen was there, it must be hemmed; when there had come a question of marking the sheets, she had evaded the task,—­not without raising suspicion in the bosom of Madame Voss.

But it was, as she knew, absolutely necessary that her uncle should be informed of her purpose.  When he had come to her after the walk, and demanded of her whether she still intended to marry Adrian Urmand, she had answered him falsely.  ‘I suppose so,’ she had said.  The question—­such a question as it was—­had been put to her too abruptly to admit of a true answer on the spur of the moment.  But the falsehood almost stuck in her throat and was a misery to her till she could set it right by a clear declaration of the truth.  She had yet to determine what she would do;—­how she would tell this truth; in what way she would insure to herself the power of carrying out her purpose.  Her mind, the reader must remember, was somewhat dark in the matter.  She was betrothed to the man, and she had always heard that a betrothal was half a marriage.  And yet she knew of instances in which marriages had been broken off after betrothal quite as ceremonious as her own—­had been broken off without scandal or special censure from the Church.  Her aunt, indeed, and M. le Cure had, ever since the plighting of her troth to M. Urmand, spoken of the matter in her presence, as though the wedding were a thing already nearly done;—­not suggesting by the tenor of their speech that any one could wish in any case to make a change, but pointing out incidentally that any change was now out of the question.  But Marie had been sharp enough to understand perfectly the gist of her aunt’s manoeuvres and of the priest’s incidental information.  The thing could be done, she know; and she feared no one in the doing of it,—­except her uncle.  But she did fear that if she simply told him that it must be done, he would have such a power over her that she would not succeed.  In what way could she do it first, and then tell him afterwards?