But, since her father's death, another trust had been left in her hands: all his papers. Annette had no desire to learn what they contained. Her piety told her that they did not belong to her; but another sentiment whispered the contrary. In any event, it was necessary to decide upon their fate: Annette, sole heiress, might die in her turn, and those family papers should not be allowed to fall into strange hands. It was urgent, then, to examine them, and to determine whether they were to be destroyed or preserved. For some days now Annette had been decided on this course. But when she found herself again, at evening, in the room that was permeated by the beloved presence, she lacked courage to do more than drink in this presence for hours, without stirring. She feared, in opening these letters of the past, too direct a contact with reality. Yet it must be done. This evening she was resolved upon it. In the diffused softness of this over tender night, in which she disturbedly felt the dwindling of her grief, she wished to affirm her possession of the dead man. She went toward the piece of rosewood furniture, more suitable for a coquette than for a worker, a high Louis XV chiffonier, in which Rivière had heaped his letters and intimate papers, disposing them in the seven or eight drawers that made the piece a kind of anticipatory and charming model of the American skyscraper. Annette, kneeling, pulled out the lower drawer; then to examine it the better, she lifted it out completely, and, returning to her place by the fire, she sank to her knees and bent over it. Not a sound in the house. She was living there alone, save for an old aunt who kept house and who scarcely counted: Aunt Victorine, an eclipsed sister of Annette's father, who had always lived to serve Rivière, and who now continued as housekeeper in the service of her niece,--not unlike an old cat, having finally become a part of the furniture of the house, to which she was as much attached, no doubt, as to the human beings. Having retired to her room early in the evening, her distant presence on the floor above, the peaceable coming and going of her old felt-shod feet, disturbed Annette's reveries no more than would a familiar animal. She began to read, curious and a little troubled. But her orderly instinct and her need of calm, which insisted that everything in and around herself should be clearly arranged, imposed on her, as she picked up and unfolded the letters, a slowness of movement and a detached coldness that succeeded in deluding her for a time at least.