ater in the water-bottle, and that the window was
properly closed.

Pierre and Jean had remained in the little outer drawing-room; the
younger still sore under the criticism passed on his taste, and the
elder chafing more and more at seeing his brother in this abode. They
both sat smoking without a word. Pierre suddenly started to his feet.

"Cristi!" he exclaimed. "The widow looked very jaded this evening.
Long excursions do not improve her."

Jean felt his spirit rising with one of those sudden and furious rages
which boil up in easy-going natures when they are wounded to the
quick. He could hardly find breath to speak, so fierce was his
excitement, and he stammered out:

"I forbid you ever again to say 'the widow' when you speak of Mme.
Rosemilly."

Pierre turned on him haughtily:

"You are giving me an order, I believe. Are you gone mad by any
chance?"

Jean had pulled himself up.

"I am not gone mad, but I have had enough of your manners to me."

Pierre sneered: "To you? And are you any part of Mme. Rosemilly?"

"You are to know that Mme. Rosemilly is about to become my wife."

Pierre laughed the louder.

"Ah! ha! Very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of
her as 'the widow.' But you have taken a strange way of announcing
your engagement."

"I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it."

Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with
exasperation at this irony leveled at the woman he loved and had
chosen.

But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of
impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for
so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain,
bewildering it like a fit.

"How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue--do you
hear? I order you."

Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying
in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the
phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went
on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to
speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:

"I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since
the day when you first began to talk of 'the widow' because you knew
it annoyed me."

Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were
common with him:

"Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you? I? I? And of what? G