ceremony was over; the women rose from their knees, and everyone began to hurry back. The choir-boy let the cross swing from side to side, or tilt forward till it nearly fell; the curé, no longer praying, hurried behind him; the choristers and the serpent-player disappeared down a narrow turning to get back and undress quickly, the sailors hastened past in twos and threes; a good lunch was waiting for them at Les Peuples and the very thought of it quickened their pace and made their mouths water.
Sixty sailors and peasants sat down to the long table laid in the courtyard under the apple trees. The baroness sat at the middle of the table with the curé from Yport on one side of her and the Abbé Picot on the other; opposite her was the baron between the mayor and his wife. The mayoress was a thin, elderly country woman with a nod for everyone; her big Normandy cap fitted close round her thin face, making her head, with its round, astonished-looking eyes, look like a white-tufted fowl's, and she ate in little jerks as if she were pecking at her plate.
Jeanne was silent, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, her head turned with joy. At last she asked the vicomte, who was sitting beside her:
"What is your Christian name?"
"Julien," he replied; "did you not know?"
She did not answer him, for she was thinking: "How often I shall repeat that name to myself."
When lunch was over, the courtyard was left to the sailors. The baroness began to take her exercise, leaning on the baron and accompanied by the two priests, and Jeanne and Julien walked down to the wood, and wandered along its little winding paths. All at once he took her hands in his.
"Tell me," he said, "will you be my wife?"
She hung her head, and he pleaded:
"Do not keep me in suspense, I implore you."
Then she slowly raised her eyes to his, and in that look he read her answer.
IV
The baron went into Jeanne's room before she was up one morning soon after the christening of the boat, and sat down at the foot of the bed.
"M. le Vicomte de Lamare has proposed for you," he said.
Jeanne would have liked to hide her head under the bed-clothes.
"We told him we must think over his proposal before we could give him an answer," continued the baron, who was smiling. "We did not wish to arrange anything without first consulting you; your mother and I made no objection to the marriage, but at the same time we did not make any promise. You are a great deal richer than he is, but when the happiness of a life is at stake the question of money ought not to be considered. He has no relations, so if you married him we should gain a son, whereas if you married anyone else you would have to go among strangers, and we should lose our daughter. We like the young fellow, but the question is, do you like him?"
"I am quite willing to marry him, papa," she stammered out, blushing to the roots of her hair.
The baron looked into her eyes, and said with a smile: "I thought as much, mademoiselle."
Until that evening Jeanne hardly knew what she was doing. She went through everything mechanically, feeling thoroughly worn out with fatigue, although she had done nothing to tire her. The vicomte came about six o'clock and found her sitting with her mother under the plane-tree, and Jeanne's heart beat wildly as the young man came calmly towards them. He kissed the baroness's fingers, then, raising the young girl's trembling hand to his lips, he imprinted on it a long, tender kiss of gratitude.
The happy betrothal time began. The young couple spent their days sitting on the slope leading to the waste land beyond the wood, or walking up and down the baroness's avenue, she with her eyes fixed on the dusty track her mother's foot had made, he talking of the future. Once the marriage agreed to, they wanted it to take place as soon as possible, so it was decided that they should be married in six weeks' time, on the 15th of August, and that they should start on their wedding tour almost immediately afterwards. When Jeanne was asked to what country she should like to go, she chose Corsica, where they would be more alone than in Italy.
They awaited the time of their union without very much impatience, vaguely desiring more passionate embraces, and yet satisfied with a slight caress, a pressure of the hand, a gaze so long that each seemed to read the other's heart through their eyes.
No one was to be asked to the wedding besides Aunt Lison, the baroness's sister, who was a lady-boarder in a convent at Versailles.
After their father's death the baroness wanted her sister to live with her, but the old maid was convinced that she was a nuisance to everybody, and always in the way, and she took apartments in one of the convents which open their doors to the solitary and unhappy, though she occasionally spent a month or two with her relations. She was a small woman with very little to say, and always kept in the background; when she stayed with the baroness she was only seen at meal times, the rest of the day she spent shut up in her room. She had a kind, rather old-looking face, although she was only forty-two, with sad, meek eyes. Her wishes had always been sacrificed to those of everyone else. As a child she had always sat quietly in some corner, never kissed because she was neither pretty nor noisy, and as a young girl no one had ever troubled about her. Her sister, following the example of her parents, always thought of her as of someone of no importance, almost like some object of furniture which she was accustomed to see every day but which never occupied her thoughts.
She seemed ashamed of her name, Lise, because it was so girlish and pretty, and when there seemed no likelihood of her marrying, "Lise" had gradually changed to "Lison." Since the birth of Jeanne she had become "Aunt Lison," a sort of poor relation whom everyone treated with a careless familiarity which hid a good-natured contempt. She was prim and very timid even with her sister and brother-in-law, who liked her as they liked everyone, but whose affection was formed of an indifferent kindness, and an unconscious compassion.
Sometimes when the baroness was speaking of the far-away time of her childhood she would say to fix a date: "It was about the time of Lison's mad attempt." She never said anything more, and there was a certain mystery about this "mad attempt."
One evening, when she was about nineteen years old, Lise had tried to drown herself. No one could understand the reason of this act of folly; there was nothing in her life or habits to at all account for it. She had been rescued half-dead, and her parents, shocked at the deed, had not attempted to discover its cause, but had only talked about her "mad attempt," in the same way as they had spoken of the accident to the horse Coco, when he had broken his leg in a ditch and had to be killed. Since then Lise had been thought very weak-minded, and everyone around her gradually came to look upon her with the mild contempt with which her relations regarded her; even little Jeanne, perceiving with the quickness of a child how her parents treated her aunt, never ran to kiss her or thought of performing any little services for her. No one ever went to her room, and Rosalie, the maid, alone seemed to know where it was situated. If anyone wanted to speak to her a servant was sent to find her, and if she could not be found no one troubled about her, no one thought of her, no one would ever have dreamt of saying:
"Dear me! I have not seen Lison this morning."
When she came down to breakfast of a morning, little Jeanne went and held up her face for a kiss, and that was the only greeting she received. She had no position in the house and seemed destined never to be understood even by her relations, never able to gain their love or confidence, and when she died she would leave no empty chair, no sense of loss behind her.
When anyone said "Aunt Lison" the words caused no more feeling of affection in anyone's heart than if the coffee pot or sugar basin had been mentioned. She always walked with little, quick, noiseless steps, never
