sounded as if they were carrying a body, then
Julien came to tell her that she could go back to her room. She went
upstairs and sat down again before her bedroom fire, trembling as if she
had just witnessed some terrible accident.

"How is she?" she asked.

Julien, apparently in a great rage, was walking about the room in a
preoccupied, nervous way. He did not answer his wife for some moments,
but at last he asked, stopping in his walk:

"Well, what do you mean to do with this girl?"

Jeanne looked at her husband as if she did not understand his question.

"What do you mean?" she said. "I don't know; how should I?"

"Well, anyhow, we can't keep that child in the house," he cried,
angrily.

Jeanne looked very perplexed, and sat in silence for some time. At last
she said:

"But, my dear, we could put it out to nurse somewhere?"

He hardly let her finish her sentence.

"And who'll pay for it? Will you?"

"But surely the father will take care of it," she said, after another
long silence. "And if he marries Rosalie, everything will be all right."

"The father!" answered Julien, roughly; "the father! Do you know who is
the father? Of course you don't. Very well, then!"

Jeanne began to get troubled: "But he certainly will not forsake the
girl; it would be such a cowardly thing to do. We will ask her his name,
and go and see him and force him to give some account of himself."

Julien had become calmer, and was again walking about the room.

"My dear girl," he replied, "I don't believe she will tell you the man's
name, or me either. Besides, suppose he wouldn't marry her? You must see
that we can't keep a girl and her illegitimate child in our house."

But Jeanne would only repeat, doggedly:

"Then the man must be a villain; but we will find out who he is, and
then he will have us to deal with instead of that poor girl."

Julien got very red.

"But until we know who he is?" he asked.

She did not know what to propose, so she asked Julien what he thought
was the best thing to do. He gave his opinion very promptly.

"Oh, I should give her some money, and let her and her brat go to the
devil."

That made Jeanne very indignant.

"That shall never be done," she declared; "Rosalie is my foster-sister,
and we have grown up together. She has erred, it is true, but I will
never turn her out-of-doors for that, and, if there is no other way out
of the difficulty, I will bring up the child myself."

"And we s