“What eyes he has!” muttered Nannon to herself, going unwillingly up the stairs on her errand. “And yet they are as blue as the very cornflowers. What does he come here frightening that poor child for, I should be glad to know! A man so hard as he has no right to have eyes like that.—If mademoiselle pleases I will say I cannot find her.”
“Monsieur Deshoulières!” said Thérèse, crumpling together the work on her lap with a quick, agitated movement, when Nannon made her announcement.
“Shall you see him? Beware, then, mademoiselle. I know these men. Do not yield a thing, or the convent will be thrust down your throat.”
“I do not think I care,” the girl said, rising wearily, “nothing can be worse than this life.”
“Am I to come with you, then, or shall I go on with the work? Dame! do they give you such holes to mend!”
“I had better go alone,” answered Thérèse, pausing to think over what in a French household is always a breach of etiquette. “There is no one to care,” she said to herself bitterly, as she went down.
When M. Deshoulières saw her enter, he started. Her face was pale, thin; there was a heaviness in her movements which his experienced eye noted at once.
“You have been ill, mademoiselle?” he said anxiously. He had come without any very definite purpose; it was, he told himself, to see how she looked, whether she was well and happy. The sight of her sent the blood rushing to his heart, he hardly knew what he was saying. Strong man as he was, he stood there trembling. “You have been ill?” he repeated.
Thérèse shook her head.
“Then something has happened?”