"Hein! that is the question, and I answer it this way. You can stay here, under my respectable roof, until your friends come forward; but of course you must work, or how will my rent be paid? A mere trifle, it is true, but still something; and besides the rent there will be your ménage to make. For one week I will feed you, but after that it is your affair, and not mine. Even a white slip of a girl like you requires food. The question is, what can you do to earn it?"
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau coloured.
"I can embroider," she said hesitatingly. "I helped to work an altar cloth for the Convent chapel last year."
Rosalie gave a coarse laugh.
"Eh—altar cloths! What is the good of that? Soon there will be no altars to put them on!"
"I learned to embroider muslin too," said Mademoiselle hastily. "I could work fine stuffs, for fichus, or caps, or handkerchiefs, perhaps."
Rosalie considered.
"Well, that's better, though you 'll find it hard to fill even your pinched stomach out of such work; but we can see how it goes. I will bring you muslin and thread, and you shall work a piece for me to see. I know a woman who would buy on my recommendation, if it were well done."
"They said I did it well," said Mademoiselle meekly. Her eyes smarted suddenly, and she thought with a desperate yearning of comfortable Sister Marie Madeleine, or even the severe Soeur Marie Mediatrice. How far away the Convent stillness seemed, and how desirable!
"Good," said Rosalie; "then that is settled. For the rest, I cannot have Mlle de Rochambeau lodging with me. That will not go now. What is your Christian name?"