ed her beauty. Illness, toil, and grief had endowed her with the
mysterious gifts of melancholy, the inward vitalizing thought, which is
lacking to poor country-folk whose lives are almost animal. Her dress,
full of that Parisian taste which all women, even the least coquettish,
contract so readily, distinguished her still further from an ordinary
peasant-woman. In her ignorance as to what was before her, and having no
means of judging Madame Graslin, she appeared very shy and shame-faced.

"Do you still love Farrabesche?" asked Veronique, when Grossetete left
them for a moment.

"Yes, madame," she replied coloring.

"Why, then, having sent him a thousand francs during his imprisonment,
did you not join him after his release? Have you any repugnance to him?
Speak to me as though I were your mother. Are you afraid he has become
altogether corrupt; or did you fear he no longer wanted you?"

"Neither, madame; but I do not know how to read or write, and I was
serving a very exacting old lady; she fell ill and I had to nurse her.
Though I knew the time when Jacques would be released, I could not
get away from Paris until after the lady's death. She did not leave
me anything, notwithstanding my devotion to her interests and to her
personally. After that I wanted to be cured of an ailment caused
by night-watching and hard work, and as I had used up my savings, I
resolved to go to the hospital of Saint-Louis, which I have just left,
cured."

"Very good, my child," said Madame Graslin, touched by this simple
explanation. "But tell me now why you abandoned your parents so
abruptly, why you left your child behind you, and why you did not send
any news of yourself, or get some one to write for you."

For all answer Catherine wept.

"Madame," she said at last, reassured by the pressure of Madame
Graslin's hand, "I may have done wrong, but I hadn't the strength to
stay here. I did not fear myself, but others; I feared gossip, scandal.
So long as Jacques was in danger, I was necessary to him and I stayed;
but after he had gone I had no strength left,--a girl with a child and
no husband! The worst of creatures was better than I. I don't know what
would have become of me had I stayed to hear a word against my boy
or his father; I should have gone mad; I might have killed myself. My
father or my mother in a moment of anger might have reproached me. I am
too sensitive to bear a quarrel or an insult, gentle as I am. I have
had my p