"Well, at least I won’t harm you—you know that; but you are safe enough, so far, for no one else saw you. They were all watching to see the roof fall in over there to the right, and I should have been watching too, only that my cousin Anne had just been scolding me so for being there at all. She said my baby would have St. John’s fire right across his face. She herself has a red patch over one eye, and only because her mother would sit staring at the embers. Well, I thought I would be prudent, so I bade Jean Jacques look instead of me, and turned my head the other way, and, just as the flames shot up, I saw you cross the terrace and go down the steps. And now, what are you going to do with Mademoiselle?" This most pertinent question took them all aback, and Marguerite looked up with round, bewildered eyes; she certainly had no suggestions to make. At last Mlle Ange said slowly: "She must come home with us." "Impossible! No, no, that would never do, dear Ma’mselle." "But there is nothing else to be done." "Oh, there must be. Why, you could not hide an infant in your house. Everything is known in the village,—and—I should not trust Jeanne overmuch." "Madelon! Jeanne? She has been with us a life-time." "Maybe, but she hates the Montenay more than she loves you and Mlle Marthe. Also, she is jealous of Madame here,—and—in fact, she has talked too much already." "Then what is to be done?" asked Ange distractedly. She was trembling and unnerved. That a man’s foes could be they of his own household, was one of those horrible truths which now came home to her for the first time. "Jeanne," she kept repeating; "no, it is not possible that Jeanne would do anything to harm us." Madelon drew Aline aside. "Jeanne is an old beast," she said frankly. "I always said so; but until the other day I did not think she was unfaithful. Now,—well, I only tell you that my father said she had given him ’valuable information.’ What do you make of that, eh?" "What you do," said Aline calmly. "Well, then, what next?" "What do you advise?" "Seigneur! Don’t put it on me. What is there to advise?" As she spoke, with a shrug of her plump shoulders, Marguerite came forward. In her white undergarment, with her brown hair loose and curling, and her brown eyes brimmed with tears, she looked like a punished child. Even the smuts on her face seemed to add somehow to the youth and pathos of her appearance. "Oh, Aline," she said, with a half sob, "where am I to go? What am I to do?" And in a moment the mother in Madelon melted in her. "There, there, little Ma’mselle," she said quickly, "there ’s nothing to cry about. You shall come along with me, and if I can’t give you as fine a bed as you had in this old gloomy place, at any rate it will be a safer one, and, please the Saints, you ’ll not be burnt out of it." "No, no, Madelon, you mustn’t," said Mlle Ange. "And why not, chère Ma’mselle?"