her
self in when sharp, pricking pains in her ankles made her jump back,
and she uttered a cry of despair, for, from her knees to the tips of her
feet, long black leeches were sucking her lifeblood, and were swelling
as they adhered to her flesh. She did not dare to touch them, and
screamed with horror, so that her cries of despair attracted a peasant,
who was driving along at some distance, to the spot. He pulled off the
leeches one by one, applied herbs to the wounds, and drove the girl to
her master's farm in his gig.

She was in bed for a fortnight, and as she was sitting outside the
door on the first morning that she got up, the farmer suddenly came and
planted himself before her. "Well," he said, "I suppose the affair is
settled isn't it?" She did not reply at first, and then, as he remained
standing and looking at her intently with his piercing eyes, she said
with difficulty: "No, master, I cannot." He immediately flew into a
rage.

"You cannot, girl; you cannot? I should just like to know the reason
why?" She began to cry, and repeated: "I cannot." He looked at her, and
then exclaimed angrily: "Then I suppose you have a lover?" "Perhaps that
is it," she replied, trembling with shame.

The man got as red as a poppy, and stammered out in a rage: "Ah! So
you confess it, you slut! And pray who is the fellow? Some penniless,
half-starved ragamuffin, without a roof to his head, I suppose? Who is
it, I say?" And as she gave him no answer, he continued: "Ah! So you
will not tell me. Then I will tell you; it is Jean Baudu?"--"No, not
he," she exclaimed. "Then it is Pierre Martin?"--"Oh! no, master."

And he angrily mentioned all the young fellows in the neighborhood,
while she denied that he had hit upon the right one, and every moment
wiped her eyes with the corner of her blue apron. But he still tried to
find it out, with his brutish obstinacy, and, as it were, scratching at
her heart to discover her secret, just as a terrier scratches at a
hole to try and get at the animal which he scents inside it. Suddenly,
however, the man shouted: "By George! It is Jacques, the man who was
here last year. They used to say that you were always talking together,
and that you thought about getting married."

Rose was choking, and she grew scarlet, while her tears suddenly stopped
and dried up on her cheeks, like drops of water on hot iron, and she
exclaimed: "No, it is not he, it is not he!" "Is that really a fact?"
asked the c