Thenceforth Jeanne was stubbornly bent on going down to the garden as soon as ever she heard Madame Deberle’s voice there. All Rosalie’s tittle-tattle regarding the next-door house she drank in greedily, ever restless and inquisitive concerning its inmates and their doings; and she would even slip out of the bedroom to keep watch from the kitchen window. In the garden, ensconced in a small arm-chair which was brought for her use from the drawing-room by Juliette’s direction, her eyes never quitted the family. Lucien she now treated with great reserve, annoyed it seemed by his questions and antics, especially when the doctor was present. On those occasions she would stretch herself out as if wearied, gazing before her with her eyes wide open. For Hélène the afternoons were pregnant with anguish. She always returned, however, returned in spite of the feeling of revolt which wrung her whole being. Every day when, on his arrival home, Henri printed a kiss on Juliette’s hair, her heart leaped in its agony. And at those moments, if to hide the agitation of her face she pretended to busy herself with Jeanne, she would notice that the child was even paler than herself, with her black eyes glaring and her chin twitching with repressed fury. Jeanne shared in her suffering. When the mother turned away her head, heartbroken, the child became so sad and so exhausted that she had to be carried upstairs and put to bed. She could no longer see the doctor approach his wife without changing countenance; she would tremble, and turn on him a glance full of all the jealous fire of a deserted mistress. “I cough in the morning,” she said to him one day. “You must come and see for yourself.” Rainy weather ensued, and Jeanne became quite anxious that the doctor should commence his visits once more. Yet her health had much improved. To humor her, Hélène had been constrained to accept two or three invitations to dine with the Deberles. At last the child’s heart, so long torn by hidden sorrow, seemingly regained quietude with the complete re-establishment of her health. She would again ask Hélène the old question—“Are you happy, mother darling?” “Yes, very happy, my pet,” was the reply. And this made her radiant. She must be pardoned her bad temper in the past, she said. She referred to it as a fit which no effort of her own will could prevent, the result of a headache that came on her suddenly. Something would spring up within her—she wholly failed to understand what it was. She was tempest-tossed by a multitude of vague imaginings—nightmares that she could not even have recalled to memory. However, it was past now; she was well again, and those worries would nevermore return. CHAPTER XV.