The three children were left alone. Madame de Sainfoy walked quickly into Mademoiselle Moineau's room, the little governess waddling after her, and the door was shut.
Riette made a skip in the air and pirouetted on one foot. Then while Sophie and Lucie stared open-mouthed, she was on a chair; then with a wild spring, she was hanging by her hands to the top cornice of a great walnut-wood press; then she was on her feet again, light as an india-rubber ball.
"Ah, mon Dieu! sit down, Riette, or we shall all be beaten!" sighed the trembling Lucie.
"Don't be frightened, children!" murmured Riette. "Where is our book? Now, my angels, think, think of Henri Quatre and all his glory!"
In the meanwhile, Mademoiselle Moineau laid her complaint of Hélène before the Comtesse. Something was certainly the matter with the girl; she would not read, she would not talk, her tasks of needlework were neglected, she did not care to go out, or to do anything but sit in her window and gaze across the valley.
"Of course there has been no opportunity—they have never met, except in public—but if it were not entirely out of the question—" Mademoiselle Moineau stammered, blushing, conscious, though she would never confess it, of having nodded one day for a few minutes under a certain mulberry tree. "The other night, madame, at the dinner party, did it strike you that a certain gentleman was a little forward, a little intimate—"
Madame de Sainfoy lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders.
"You mean young La Marinière? Bah! nonsense, mademoiselle. Only a little cousin, and a quite impossible one. We cannot keep him quite at arm's length, because of his father, who has been so excellent. But if you really think that Hélène has any such absurdity in her head—"
"Oh, madame, I do not say so. I have no positive reason for saying so. She has told me nothing—"
"I should think not," said Madame de Sainfoy, shortly.