"I leave
her to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her
more kindness than she deserves."
Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin's eyes,
which frightened her.
"Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if I
were that sugar-basin! And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can
hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her
from below. She is perversity itself,--perversity, I say; and you
needn't expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?"
"What has she done wrong?" asked Rogron.
"At her age, too! to begin so young!" screamed the angry old maid.
Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do,
for she could hardly bear the scene any longer. Though such language
was not new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her
cousin's rage seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what
her fury would be if she came to know about Brigaut. Perhaps her
cousin would have him sent away, and she should lose him! All the many
thoughts, the deep and rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she
resolved to keep absolute silence about a circumstance in which her
conscience told her there was nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter
words she had been made to hear and the wounding suspicion so shocked
her that as she reached the kitchen she was taken with a convulsion of
the stomach and turned deadly sick.
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