As she spoke Pierrette struck her head against the door of the passage
which some one had left open.
"Good! I'm glad of it," cried Sylvie, as they heard the blow.
"She must be hurt," said Desfondrilles.
"She deserves it," replied Sylvie.
"It was a bad blow," said Mademoiselle Habert.
Sylvie thought she might escape paying her _misere_ if she went to see
after Pierrette, but Madame de Chargeboeuf stopped her.
"Pay us first," she said, laughing; "you will forget it when you come
back."
The remark, based on the old maid's trickery and her bad faith in
paying her debts at cards was approved by the others. Sylvie sat down
and thought no more of Pierrette,--an indifference which surprised no
one. When the game was over, about half past nine o'clock, she flung
herself into an easy chair at the corner of the fireplace and did not
even rise as her guests departed. The colonel was torturing her; she
did not know what to think of him.
"Men are so false!" she cried, as she went to bed.
Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow on the head, just above
the ear, at the spot where young girls part their hair when they put
their "front hair" in curlpapers. The next day there was a large
swelling.
"God has punished you," said Sylvie at the breakfast table. "You
disobeyed me; you treated me with disrespect in leaving the room
before I had finished my sentence; you got what you deserved.
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