"I mean to say that you have seen as well as I what is going on, and that you don't like it any more than I do. Only, I'm a man, and I get in a rage; you are a girl, and you cry."
Mary could not repress a sob as she felt Jean Oullier's finger in her wound.
"It is not astonishing," continued the keeper, muttering to himself; "wolf as they call you,--those curs,--you are still a woman, and a woman kneaded of the best flour that ever fell from the sifter of the good God."
"Really, Jean, I don't understand you."
"Oh, yes; you do understand me very well, little Mary. Yes; you have seen what is happening the same as I have. Who wouldn't see it?--good God! One must be blind not to, for she takes no pains to hide it."
"But whom are you speaking of, Jean? Tell me; don't you see that you are killing me with anxiety?"
"Whom should I be speaking of but Mademoiselle Bertha?"
"My sister?"
"Yes, your sister, who parades herself about with that greenhorn; who means to drag him in her train to our camp; and, meantime, having tied him to her apron-strings for fear he should get away, is exhibiting him to everybody all round as a conquest, without considering what the people in the house and the friends of the marquis will say,--not to speak of that mischievous notary, who is watching it all with his little eyes, and mending his pen already to draw the contract."
"But supposing all that is so," said Mary, whose paleness was now succeeded by a high color, and whose heart was beating as though it would break,--"supposing all that is so, where is the harm?"