“I am sorry. Good-evening, Mademoiselle,” rejoined Rosalie evenly.
“You wanted to insult me. You knew I wasn’t Madame.”
Rosalie shook her head. “How should I know? You have not always lived in Chaudiere, you have lived in Montreal, and people often call you Madame.”
“You know better. You know that letters come to me from Montreal addressed Mademoiselle.”
Rosalie turned as if to go. “I do not recall what letters pass through the post-office. I have a good memory for forgetting. Good-evening,” she added, with an excess of courtesy. Paulette read the placid scorn in the girl’s face; she did not see and would not understand that Rosalie did not scorn her for what she had ever done, but for something that she was.
“You think I am the dirt under your feet,” she said, now white, now red, and mad with anger. “I’m not fit to speak with you—I’m a rag for the dust pile!”
“I have never thought so,” answered Rosalie. “I have not liked you, but I am sorry for you, and I never thought those things.”
“You lie!” was the rejoinder; and Rosalie, turning away quickly with trouble in her face, put her hands to her ears, and, hastening down the hillside, did not hear the words the woman called after her.
“To-morrow every one shall know you are a thief. Run, run, run! You can hear what I say, white-face! They shall know about the little cross to-morrow.”
She followed Rosalie at a distance, her eyes blazing. As fate would have it, she met on the highroad the least scrupulous man in the parish, an inveterate gossip, the keeper of the general store, whose only opposition in business was the post-office shop. He was the centre of the village tittle-tattle, and worse. With malicious speed Paulette told him how she had seen Rosalie Evanturel nailing the little cross on the church door of a certain night. If he wanted proof of what she said, let him ask Jo Portugais.