He disappeared from the house.
The baroness soon came back, triumphant and gay.
“I have sent her to bid them ring the bells in the village. The poor shall be feasted; all shall share our joy: my son was dead, and lives. Oh, joy! joy! joy!”
“Mother!” shrieked Josephine.
“Mad woman that I am, I am too boisterous. Help me, Rose! she is going to faint; her lips are white.”
Dr. Aubertin and Rose brought a chair. They forced Josephine into it. She was not the least faint; yet her body obeyed their hands just like a dead body. The baroness melted into tears; tears streamed from Rose’s eyes. Josephine’s were dry and stony, and fixed on coming horror. The baroness looked at her with anxiety. “Thoughtless old woman! It was too sudden; it is too much for my dear child; too much for me,” and she kneeled, and laid her aged head on her daughter’s bosom, saying feebly through her tears, “too much joy, too much joy!”
Josephine took no notice of her. She sat like one turned to stone looking far away over her mother’s head with rigid eyes fixed on the air and on coming horrors.
Rose felt her arm seized. It was Aubertin. He too was pale now, though not before. He spoke in a terrible whisper to Rose, his eye fixed on the woman of stone that sat there.
“IS THIS JOY?”
Rose, by a mighty effort, raised her eyes and confronted his full. “What else should it be?” said she.