"You will tell my aunts that my business was pressing, or I should have visited them. Give them my greetings. They will be good to you."
"Yes—the letter was kind."
"They are good women." He handed her a folded paper. "This is my direction. Keep it carefully, and if you need anything, or are in any trouble, you will write." His voice made it an order, not a request, and she winced.
"Yes," she said, with stiff lips.
Dangeau's face grew harder. If it were only over, this parting! He craved for action—longed to be away—to be quit of this intolerable strain. He had kept his word, he had assured her safety, let him be gone out of her life, into such a life as a man might make for himself, in the tumult and flame of war.
"Seigneur!" said Madelon, at the window. "See, Jean Jacques,"—and she nudged that patient man,—"see how he looks at her! Ma foi, I am glad it is not I! And with a face as if it had been cut out of stone, and there he gets in without so much as a touch of the hand, let alone a kiss! Is this the way of it in Paris?"
"Thou must still be talking, Madelon," said Jean Jacques, complacently.
"Well, I should not like it," shrugged Madelon pettishly.
"No, I 'll warrant you wouldn't," said the miller, with a grin and a hearty kiss.
At four o'clock the business and pleasure of the market-day were over, and the folk began to jog home again. Aline sat beside Madelon on the empty meal-sacks, and looked about her with a vague curiosity as they made their way through the poplar-bordered lanes, bumping prodigiously every now and then, in a manner that testified to the truth of Madelon's description of the road.