about forty to fifty years of age, robust and masculine,
were negligently and shabbily dressed, like chambermaids of the lower
sort; over their clothes they wore large aprons of blue cotton, cut
sloping from their necks, and reaching down to their feet. One of them,
who held a lamp in her hand, had a broad, red, shining face, a large
pimpled nose, small green eyes, and tow hair, which straggled rough and
shaggy from beneath her dirty white cap. The other, sallow, withered, and
bony, wore a mourning-cap over a parchment visage, pitted with the
small-pox, and rendered still more repulsive by the thick black eyebrows,
and some long gray hairs that overshadowed the upper lip. This woman
carried, half unfolded in her hand, a garment of strange form, made of
thick gray stuff.

They both entered silently by the little door, at the moment when
Adrienne, in the excess of her terror, was grasping the bars of the
window, and crying out: "Help! help!"

Pointing out the young lady to each other, one of them went to place the
lamp on the chimney-piece, whilst the other (she who wore the mourning
cap) approached the window, and laid her great bony hand upon Mdlle. de
Cardoville's shoulder.

Turning round, Adrienne uttered a new cry of terror at the sight of this
grim figure. Then, the first moment of stupor over, she began to feel
less afraid; hideous as was this woman, it was at least some one to speak
to; she exclaimed, therefore, in an agitated voice: "Where is M.
Baleinier?"

The two women looked at each other, exchanged a leer of mutual
intelligence, but did not answer.

"I ask you, madame," resumed Adrienne, "where is M. Baleinier, who
brought me hither? I wish to see him instantly."

"He is gone," said the big woman.

"Gone!" cried Adrienne; "gone without me!--Gracious heaven! what can be
the meaning of all this?" Then, after a moment's reflection, she resumed,
"Please to fetch me a coach."

The two women looked at each other, and shrugged their shoulders. "I
entreat you, madame," continued Adrienne, with forced calmness in her
voice, "to fetch me a coach since M. Baleinier is gone without me. I wish
to leave this place."

"Come, come, madame," said the tall woman, who was called "Tomboy,"
without appearing to listen to what Adrienne asked, "it is time for you
to go to bed."

"To go to bed!" cried Mdlle. Cardoville, in alarm. "This is really enough
to drive one mad." Then, addressing the two women, she added: "What