ch
as you have yourself. Do you know how much you will have after all these
loans and mortgages have been cleared off, and you have paid all the
interest you have let run on and increase? You don't know, do you? Well,
then, let me tell you that you haven't ten thousand livres a year; not
ten thousand. But I'm going to put everything straight, and pretty soon,
too."

She had again raised her voice, for the thought of the ruin which hung
over the house, and the way in which the interest money had been
neglected and allowed to accumulate roused her anger and indignation. A
faint, sad smile which passed over her mistress's face angered her still
more, and she cried:

"You ought not to laugh at it, madame. People are good for nothing
without money."

Jeanne took both the servant's hands in hers.

"I have never had any luck," she said slowly, as if she could think of
nothing else. "Everything has gone the wrong way with me. My whole life
has been ruined by a cruel Fate."

"You must not talk like that, madame," said Rosalie, shaking her head.
"You made an unhappy marriage, that's all. But people oughtn't to marry
before they know anything about their future husbands."

They went on talking about themselves and their past loves like two old
friends, and when the day dawned they had not yet told all they had to
say.

* * * * *

XII

In less than a week Rosalie had everything and everybody in the chateau
under her control, and even Jeanne yielded a passive obedience to the
servant, who scolded her or soothed her as if she had been a sick child.
She was very weak now, and her legs dragged along as the baroness's used
to do; the maid supported her when she went out and their conversation
was always about bygone times, of which Jeanne talked with tears in her
eyes, and Rosalie in the calm quiet way of an impassive peasant.

The old servant returned several times to the question of the interest
that was owing, and demanded the papers which Jeanne, ignorant of all
business matters, had hidden away that Rosalie might not know of Paul's
misdoings. Next Rosalie went over to Fecamp each day for a week to get
everything explained to her by a lawyer whom she knew; then one evening
after she had put her mistress to bed she sat down beside her and said
abruptly:

"Now you're in bed, madame, we will have a little talk."

She told Jeanne exactly how matters stood, and that when every claim had
bee