Pierre had not lived in his master’s family fourteen years without understanding his mistress thoroughly, and that in his heart he worshipped her was proof that he had found far more good in her than bad. He knew just how kind, and loving, and self-sacrificing she was, and how she had cared for him when he had the fever in Rome, and her father was away in Palestine. In spite of the remonstrances of friends she had stood by him night and day, for weeks because he missed her when she was absent and called for her in his delirium. It did not matter that the gayeties of the carnival were in progress and that rare facilities were offered her for seeing them. She turned her back on them all and staid by the sick man who needed her, and who, the physicians said, owed his life to her nursing and constant care. Pierre had never forgotten it any more than he had forgotten the time when, in a fit of anger she had pounced upon his back like a cat and scratched, and bit, and pulled his hair until he shook her off and held her till her passion had subsided. Her father had punished her severely, and she had never behaved so badly since, though she sometimes shook Pierre furiously, for by contact with some living thing which resisted her she could conquer herself more readily, she said; and when there was no one near whom she dared touch she occasionally gave vent to her excitement by whirling round in circles and beating the air with her hands. Pierre knew this peculiarity, and when he came to the door and heard the tempest within, he offered himself at once as a kind of breaker for the storm to beat against. But Reinette did not need him. The battle was nearly over, for at its height, when it seemed to her that she could not lose one grain of respect for her father for having thus deceived her—could not exchange the ideal friends of her mother for _these people_ so different from herself, there came suddenly before her mind a fair, handsome face, with eyes as tender and pitiful as those of a woman, and yet with something strong and masterful in their expression as they smiled a welcome upon her. It was when she was most bewildered and confounded by the unknown relations claiming her that somebody had said, “This is another cousin;” but in her excitement she had scarcely heeded it, and made no response when the young man’s hat was lifted politely by way of a greeting. It was the same young man, she was sure, who had held her back from the open grave, and spoken to her in a voice which she recognized at once as belonging to her class. Reinette laid great stress upon the human voice, insisting that by it she could tell how much of real culture or natural, inborn refinement its owner possessed. The sharp, loud voices of the Fergusons, with their peculiar intonation, had grated upon her nerves, but the well-modulated, well-trained tones of the young man had fallen on her ear like a strain of music among jarring discords.