“Play that,” said Pierrette to the Colonel, pointing to a heart.
The Colonel led from a sequence in hearts; the hearts lay between him and Sylvie; the Colonel forced the ace, though it was guarded in Sylvie’s hand by five small cards.
“It is not fair play! Pierrette saw my hand, and the Colonel allowed her to advise him!”
“But, mademoiselle,” said Céleste, “it was the Colonel’s game to lead hearts since he found that you had one!” The speech made Desfondrilles smile; he was a keen observer, who amused himself with watching all the interests at stake in Provins, where he played the part of Rigaudin in Picard’s play of la Maison en loterie.
“It was the Colonel’s game,” Cournant put in, without knowing anything about it.
Sylvie shot at Mademoiselle Habert a look of old maid against old maid, villainous but honeyed.
“Pierrette, you saw my hand,” said Sylvie, fixing her eyes on the girl.
“No, cousin.”
“I was watching you all,” said the archaeological judge; “I can bear witness that the little girl saw no one’s hand but the Colonel’s.”
“Pooh! these little girls know very well how to steal a glance with their sweet eyes,” said Gouraud in alarm.
“Indeed!” said Sylvie.
“Yes,” replied Gouraud; “she may have looked over your hand to play you a trick. Was it not so, my beauty?”
“No,” said the honest Bretonne. “I am incapable of such a thing! In that case I should have followed my cousin’s game.”
“You know very well that you are a storyteller and a little fool into the bargain,” said Sylvie. “Since what took place this morning, who can believe a word you say? You are a …”
Pierrette did not wait to hear her cousin end the sentence in her presence. Anticipating a torrent of abuse, she rose, went out of the room without a light, and up to her room. Sylvie turned pale with rage, and muttered between her teeth, “I will pay her out!”
“Will you pay your losses?” said Madame de Chargeboeuf.
At this moment poor Pierrette hit her head against the passage door which the judge had left open.
“Good! That serves her right!” cried Sylvie.
“What has happened?” asked Desfondrilles.
“Nothing that she does not deserve,” replied Sylvie.
“She has given herself some severe blow,” said Mademoiselle Habert.
Sylvie tried to evade paying her stakes by rising to see what Pierrette had done; but Madame de Chargeboeuf stopped her.
“Pay us first,” said she, laughing; “by the time you return you will have forgotten all about it.”
This suggestion, based on the bad faith the ex-haberdasher showed in the matter of her gambling debts, met with general approval. Sylvie sat down and thought no more of Pierrette; and no one was surprised at her indifference. All the evening Sylvie was absentminded. When cards were over, at about half-past nine, she sank into an easy-chair by the fire, and only rose to take leave of her guests. The Colonel tortured her; she did not know what to think about him.
“Men are so false!” said she to herself as she fell asleep.
Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow against the edge of the door, just over her ear, where girls part their hair to put the forepart into curl-papers. Next morning there was a bad purple-veined bruise.
“God has punished you,” said Sylvie at breakfast; “you disobeyed me, you showed a great want of respect in not listening to me, and in going away in the middle of my sentence. You have no more than you deserve.”
“Still,” said Rogron, “you should put on a rag dipped in salt and water.”
“Pooh! It is nothing!” said Sylvie.
The poor child had come to the point when she thought her guardian’s remark a proof of interest.
The week ended as it had begun, in constant torment. Sylvie became ingenious, and carried her refinement of tyranny to an extreme pitch. The Illinois, Cherokees, and Mohicans might have learnt of her. Pierrette dared not complain of her indefinite misery and the pain she suffered in her head. At the bottom of Sylvie’s displeasure lay the girl’s refusal to tell anything about Brigaut; and Pierrette, with Breton obstinacy, was determined to keep a very natural silence. Everyone can imagine what a glance she gave Brigaut, who, as she believed, would be lost to her if he were discovered, and whom she instinctively longed to keep near her, happy in knowing that he was at Provins. What a delight to her to see Brigaut again! The sight of the companion of her childhood was to her like the view an exile gets from afar of his native land; she looked on him as a martyr gazes at the sky when, during his torments, his eyes, blessed with double sight, see through to heaven.
Pierrette’s parting glance had been so perfectly intelligible to the Major’s son, that while he planed his boards, opened his compasses, took his measurements, and fitted his pieces, he racked his brains for some means of corresponding with Pierrette. Brigaut at last hit on this extremely simple plan. At a certain hour at night Pierrette must let down a string, and he would tie a letter to the end of it. In the midst of her terrible sufferings from two maladies, an
