"Why should a respectable girl like you, who has but two or three ragged chemises to her name, earn the paltry sum of twenty sous per day sewing chemises worth three hundred francs apiece, for--" She burst into another bitter laugh, and turned her face to the wall, saying: "Take up your work courageously, child! I shall try to dream of cemeteries to cheer me up!" CHAPTER III. Mariette's heart was fortunately too pure, and she was, moreover, too preoccupied with her own thoughts to feel the wretched bitterness of this last sarcasm. Drawing the letter she had received from her bosom, she placed it on her lap where her godmother's eyes could not reach it, and gazed longingly at it while continuing her work. The regular breathing of the invalid soon convinced her that she was asleep, however, and she paused in her work long enough to tear open the envelope and spread the letter before her eyes. Vain and puerile curiosity! The characters were undecipherable to her! No picture could be more sorrowful and touching than the sight of this young girl, gazing with a fast beating heart at the unintelligible missive. One thing she remarked, however; the letter was very short, and this fact filled her with hope and uneasiness both. Did this short, urgent letter announce good or bad news? she anxiously asked herself. With her eyes fixed on the mysterious words, Mariette lost herself in conjectures and suppositions, fully convinced that so short a letter, after a prolonged absence, must inevitably bring unexpected news. In her poignant perplexity Mariette endured torments and excruciating torture, to which the uneducated are continually exposed. To hold in our grasp, and beneath our eyes, the few lines that bring us joy or sorrow, and be unable to penetrate the secret; to be under the necessity of asking a stranger to read these lines, and to receive from indifferent lips the announcement of something on which life itself almost depends, is an agony beyond words!