"What do you want?" he replied from below.
She hardly knew how to tell him. "It is Rosalie, who----"
Julien rushed upstairs two steps at a time, and going abruptly into
the room, he found the poor girl had just been delivered of a child.
He looked round with a wicked look on his face, and pushing his
terrified wife out of the room, exclaimed: "This is none of your
affair. Go away. Send me Ludivine and old Simon."
Jeanne, trembling, descended to the kitchen, and then, not daring to
go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, in which there had
been no fire since her parents left, and anxiously awaited news.
She presently saw the man-servant running out of the house. Five
minutes later he returned with Widow Dentu, the nurse of the district.
Then there was a great commotion on the stairs as though they were
carrying a wounded person, and Julien came in and told Jeanne that she
might go back to her room.
She trembled as if she had witnessed some terrible accident. She sat
down again before the fire, and asked: "How is she?"
Julien, preoccupied and nervous, was pacing up and down the room. He
seemed to be getting angry, and did not reply at first. Then he
stopped and said: "What do you intend to do with this girl?"
She did not understand, and looked at her husband. "Why, what do you
mean? I do not know."
Then suddenly flying into a rage, he exclaimed: "We cannot keep a
bastard in the house."