fe, the dear, charitable man."

"You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes Dona Rita.
Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you know where he hangs out you had
better let him have word to be careful. I believe he, too, is mixed up
in the Carlist intrigue. Don't you know that your sister can get him
shut up any day or get him expelled by the police?"

Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained virtue.

"Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is
awful. I said to her, 'Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?' and
she shouted like a fiend: 'For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!' She threw
herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and
laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with
the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young
Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. That wicked girl who
serves her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to her nose; but
I had a mind to run out and fetch the priest from the church where I go
to early mass. Such a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating
creature (I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to night), she
talked to our Rita very low and quieted her down. I am sure I don't know
what she said. She must be leagued with the devil. And then she asked
me if I would go down and make a cup of chocolate for her Madame.
Madame--that's our Rita. Madame! It seems they were going off directly
to Paris and her Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the
day before. Fancy me being ordered to make chocolate for our Rita!
However, the poor thing looked so exhausted and white-faced that I went.
Ah! the devil can give you an awful shake up if he likes."

Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes looked at me with
great attention. I preserved an inscrutable expression, for I wanted to
hear all she had to tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest
anxiety composing her face into a cheerful expression.

"So Dona Rita is gone to Paris?" I asked negligently.

"Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight to the railway
station from here. When she first got up from the couch she could hardly
stand. But before, while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for
her, I tried to get her to sign a paper giving over the house to me, but
she only closed her eyes and begged me to try and be a good sister a