There was a silence. Then Mimi hid her face, and Jean could hear sobbing.
"You might tell me!" Jean insisted. He was too absorbed by his own curiosity, and too upset by the full realization of the fact that she had kept something from him, to be touched by her tears.
"It's a secret," she muttered into the pillow.
"You might tell me!"
"Go away, Jeannot!" she burst out hysterically.
He gave an angry lunge against the bed.
"I tell you everything; and it's not fair. C'est pas juste!" he said savagely, but there were tears in his voice too. He was a creature at once sensitive and violent, passionately attached to Mimi.
He thudded back to his bed. But even before he had reached his bed Mimi could hear him weeping.
She gradually stilled her own sobs, and after a time Jean's ceased. And then she guessed that Jean had gone to sleep. But Mimi did not go to sleep. She knew that chance, and Mr Coe, and that odious new servant, Ada, had combined to ruin her life. She saw the whole affair clearly. Ada was officious and fussy, also secretive and given to plotting. Ada's leading idea was that children had to be circumvented. Imagine the detestable woman spying on her from the window, and then saying nothing to her, but sneaking off to tell tales to her mamma! Imagine it! Mimi's strict sense of justice could not blame her mamma. She was sure that the new stepmother meant well by her. Her mamma had given her every opportunity to confess, to admit of her own accord that she had been talking to somebody in the street, and she had not confessed. On the contrary, she had lied. Her mamma would probably say nothing more on the matter, for she had a considerable sense of honour with children, and would not take an unfair advantage. Having tried to obtain a confession from Mimi by pretending that she knew nothing, and having failed, she was not the woman to turn round and say, "Now I know all about it. So just confess at once!" Her mamma would accept the situation, would try to behave as if nothing had happened, and would probably even say nothing to her father.
But Mimi knew that she was ruined for ever in her stepmother's esteem.