which she would never have thought of in a quieter moment, and which she now asked for only to make Pierrette rise again and again just as the child was beginning to eat her food. But such mere teasing was not enough; she wanted a subject on which to find fault, and was angry with herself for not finding one. She scarcely answered her brother's silly remarks, yet she looked at him only; her eyes avoided Pierrette. Pierrette was deeply conscious of all this. She brought the milk mixed with cream for each cousin in a large silver goblet, after heating it carefully in the bain-marie. The brother and sister poured in the coffee made by Sylvie herself on the table. When Sylvie had carefully prepared hers, she saw an atom of coffee-grounds floating on the surface. On this the storm broke forth.
"What is the matter?" asked Rogron.
"The matter is that mademoiselle has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of the milk! a blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and then it was my coffee, ha! that didn't signify!"
As she spoke she was laying on the side of her plate the coffee-grounds that had run through the filter.
"But, cousin, that is coffee," said Pierrette.
"Oh! then it is I who tell lies, is it?" cried Sylvie, looking at Pierrette and blasting her with a fearful flash of anger from her eyes.
Organizations which have not been exhausted by powerful emotions often have a vast amount of the vital fluid at their service. This phenomenon of the extreme clearness of the eye in moments of anger was the more marked in Mademoiselle Rogron because she had often exercised the power of her eyes in her shop by opening them to their full extent for the purpose of inspiring her dependents with salutary fear.
"You had better dare to give me the lie!" continued Sylvie; "you deserve to be sent from the table to go and eat by yourself in the kitchen."
"What's the matter with you two?" cried Rogron, "you are as cross as bears this morning."
"Mademoiselle knows what I have against her," said Sylvie. "I leave her to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her more kindness than she deserves."
Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin's eyes, which frightened her.
"Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if I were that sugar-basin! And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her from below. She is perversity itself—perversity, I say; and you needn't expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?"
"What has she done wrong?" asked Rogron.
"At her age, too! to begin so young!" screamed the angry old maid.
Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do, for she could hardly bear the scene any longer. Though such language was not new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her cousin's rage seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what her fury would be if she came to know about Brigaut. Perhaps her cousin would have him sent away, and she should lose him! All the many thoughts, the deep and rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she resolved to keep absolute silence about a circumstance in which her conscience told her there was nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter words she had been made to hear and the wounding suspicion so shocked her that as she reached the kitchen she was taken with a convulsion of the stomach and turned deadly sick. She dared not complain; she was not sure that any one would help her. When she returned to the dining-room she was white as a sheet, and, saying she was not well, she started to go to bed, dragging herself up step by step by the baluster and thinking that she was going to die. "Poor Brigaut!" she thought.
"The girl is ill," said Rogron.
"She ill! That's only shamming," replied Sylvie, in a loud voice that Pierrette might hear. "She was well enough this morning, I can tell you."
This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping and praying to God to take her out of this world.
VII
DOMESTIC TYRANNY
For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the "Constitutionnel" to Gouraud; the colonel came obsequiously to fetch his paper, gossip a little, and take Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine. Sure of seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed herself as coquettishly as she knew how. The old maid thought she was attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a white bonnet with straggling gray feathers. About the hour when the colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself in the salon with her brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his dressing-gown and slippers.
"It is a fine day, colonel," said Rogron, when Gouraud with his heavy step entered the room. "But I'm not dressed; my sister wanted to go out, and I was going to keep the house. Wait for me; I'll be ready soon."
So saying, Rogron left Sylvie alone with the colonel.
"Where were you going? you are dressed divinely," said Gouraud, who noticed a certain solemnity on the pock-marked face of the old maid.
"I wanted very much to go out, but my little cousin is ill, and I cannot leave her."
"What is the matter with her?"
"I don't know; she had to go to bed."
Gouraud's caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by the results of his alliance with Vinet. It certainly appeared that the lawyer had got the lion's share in their enterprise. Vinet controlled the paper, he reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues; whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little. Vinet and Cournant had done the Rogrons great services; whereas Gouraud, a colonel on half-pay, could do nothing. Who was to be deputy? Vinet. Who was the chief authority in the party? Vinet. Whom did the liberals all consult? Vinet. Moreover, the colonel knew fully as well as Vinet himself the extent and depth of the passion suddenly aroused in Rogron by the beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf. This passion had now become intense, like all the last passions of men. Bathilde's voice made him tremble. Absorbed in his desires Rogron hid them; he dared not hope for such a marriage. To sound him, the colonel mentioned that he was thinking himself of asking for Bathilde's hand. Rogron turned pale at the thought of such a formidable rival, and had since then shown coldness and even hatred to Gouraud.
Thus Vinet reigned supreme in the Rogron household while he, the colonel, had no hold there except by the extremely hypothetical tie of his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that Sylvie reciprocated. When the lawyer told him of the priest's manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette, he certainly flattered Gouraud's foible; but after analyzing the inner purpose of that advice and examining the ground all about him, the colonel thought he perceived in his ally the intention of separating him from Sylvie, and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron property into the hands of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.
Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his perspicacity possessed itself immediately of certain signs which betrayed her uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and had made this plan for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet of playing him some trick, he attributed
