that M. le Marquis and Mademoiselle would for once tread the grapes to bring good luck.  They were frantic with joy; we took off their little shoes and silk stockings, rolled them up in thick cloths, and let them get into the trough and dance on the grapes with their little white feet.  That wine was always called ‘the Vintage of le Marquis.’  We could hardly get them away, they were so joyous, and each carried a great bunch of grapes as a present to the little boy at home and his mother.

We thought we saw a coachman’s head and the top of a carriage passing through the lanes, and when we came home I was surprised to find my sister-in-law in tears, thoroughly shaken and agitated.

Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau had been to see her, she said, and had told her the Count was in Paris, but had not sent for her; and I thought that enough to account for her state; but when the children began to tell their eager story, and hold up their grapes to her, she burst again into tears, and cried:  ’Oh, my dear sister, if you would be warned.  It is making a scandal, indeed it is!  They call you a plebeian.’

I grew hot and angry, and demanded what could be making a scandal, and what business Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau had to meddle with me or my affairs.

’Ah! but she will write to my husband, and he will take me from you, and that would be dreadful.  Give it up.  Oh, Marguerite, give it up for my sake!’

What was I to give up?  I demanded.  Running about the country, it appeared, like a farmer’s wife rather than a lady of quality, and stirring up the poor against their lords.  It was well known that all the English were seditious.  See what they had done to their king; and here was I, beginning the same work.  Had not the Count’s intendant at Chateau d’Aubepine thrown in his teeth what Madame de Bellaise did and permitted?  He was going to write to Monseigneur, ay, and the king’s own intendant would hear of it, so I had better take care, and Mademoiselle had come out of pure benevolence to advise Madame la Comtesse to come and take refuse at her husband’s own castle before the thunderbolt should fall upon me, and involve her in my ruin.

I laughed.  I was sure that I was neither doing nor intending any harm; I thought the whole a mere ebullition of spite on the duenna’s part to torment and frighten her emancipated victim, and I treated all as a joke to reassure Cecile, and even laughed at the Abbe for treating the matter more seriously, and saying it was always perilous to go out of a beaten track.

‘I thought the beaten track and wide road were the dangerous ones,’ I said, with more lightness, perhaps, than suited the subject.

‘Ah, Madame,’ he returned gravely, ’you have there the truth; but there may be danger in this world in the narrow path.’

The most effectual consolation that I could invent for Cecile was that if her husband thought me bad company for her, he could not but fetch her to her proper home with him, as soon as peace was made.  Did I really think so?  The little thing grew radiant with the hope.