she was always fancying that she had been found
out by the cowherd, a precocious and cunning little lad, whose bright
eyes seemed always to be watching her.

One morning the postman brought her a letter, and as she had never
received one in her life before, she was so upset by it that she was
obliged to sit down. Perhaps it was from him? But as she could not read,
she sat anxious and trembling, with that piece of paper covered with ink
in her hand; after a time, however, she put it into her pocket, as she
did not venture to confide her secret to anyone. She often stopped in
her work to look at those lines written at regular intervals, and which
terminated in a signature, imagining vaguely that she would suddenly
discover their meaning, until at last, as she felt half mad with
impatience and anxiety, she went to the schoolmaster, who told her to
sit down, and read to her, as follows:

MY DEAR DAUGHTER: I write to tell you that I am very ill. Our
neighbor, Monsieur Dentu, begs you to come, if you can. For your
affectionate mother,

CESAIRE DENTU,
DEPUTY MAYOR.

She did not say a word, and went away, but as soon as she was alone,
her legs gave way, and she fell down by the roadside, and remained there
till night.

When she got back, she told the farmer her trouble, who allowed her to
go home for as long as she wanted, and promised to have her work done by
a char-woman, and to take her back when she returned.

Her mother died soon after she got there, and the next day Rose gave
birth to a seven months' child, a miserable little skeleton, thin enough
to make anybody shudder, and which seemed to be suffering continually,
to judge from the painful manner in which it moved its poor little hands
about, which were as thin as a crab's legs, but it lived, for all that.
She said that she was married, but that she could not saddle herself
with the child, so she left it with some neighbors, who promised to take
great care of it, and she went back to the farm.

But then, in her heart, which had been wounded so long, there arose
something like brightness, an unknown love for that frail little
creature which she had left behind her, but there was fresh suffering in
that very love, suffering which she felt every hour and every minute,
because she was parted from her child. What pained her most, however,
was a mad longing to kiss it, to press it in her arms, to feel the
warmth of its little body against her ski