“Why do I not die?” she moaned. “God knows I have tried to do my duty. I have tried,—I want to do it. O God, why are the hearts of women so weak and their love so strong? My heart will break,—it will break! He has forgotten me!” She leaned her face against the casement. Hark! it was his voice there below. He spoke to Jeanne. She could hear distinctly the slow, deliberate tones. Oh, let her not lose this one happiness before she accepted the inevitable misery of flying from him!
He spoke slowly in halting French. It was evident that he had heard something of Jeanne from his mother, and believed her to be simply a sort of upper gardener. “You are Rouennaise, I think you say,” Alaine heard him remark.
“From near Rouen, but I left there many years ago.”
“Perhaps you knew a family of the name Hervieu.”
“I knew them well; they were among those who stood high in the parish of my brother.”
There was silence for a moment while Lendert puffed at his great pipe. “This family, I have met a member of it. They became Protestant.”
“A part of the family did and fled the country.”
“Yes, but one has since returned, I have been told.”
“I had not heard of it. M. Theodore Hervieu, I suppose.”
“No, his daughter.”