At eleven o'clock while the class in advanced geography was reciting, the street bell rang. Sister Ste. Marie went to answer, and came back to say that Mlle. Allen was wanted. Her maman was ill, and the bonne had come for her. All the girls turned instantly and looked at her without surprise, as though they had been expecting this. Marise started up, suddenly very pale, put on her wraps in a great hurry and ran to where Jeanne was waiting for her. Jeanne looked just as usual, although everything else seemed to have changed in an instant and to look threateningly upon Marise. "Your maman is home from the baths," said Jeanne, as though she were saying something she had made up to say beforehand, "and she doesn't feel very well. Since Monsieur is not here, I thought we would better come and get you." Marise seized Jeanne's arm and dug her fingers deep into it, "Jeanne ... Jeanne ... nothing's happened ... Maman's not...." Jeanne said with the very accent of truth, "No, no, no. Madame is not dead--never fear, my darling. She is only very ... nervous." She said it with the very accent of truth, but Marise knew perfectly well that Jeanne could say anything she pleased with that accent. She never believed a thing Jeanne said unless she knew it already. But in spite of herself she was relieved from her first wild panic. Nothing so very bad could have happened, with Jeanne standing there, carved out of brown wood, just as usual. They began to hurry up the narrow short-cut by the market, and Jeanne told her a little more. Maman had come back by the first train. She must have taken the afternoon train down from Saint Sauveur to Lourdes, and have waited hours in the station at Lourdes, till the west-bound train from Toulouse came along. And she had come in, perfectly worn out, staggering, and pushed right by Isabelle to go to her room. And she had locked the door, and wouldn't answer when they knocked, and wouldn't open when they brought a tray with some food, only called out to them in a queer hoarse voice to go get Soeur Ste. Lucie. And they could hear her crying and sobbing, so they had sent Anna Etchergary to get the nun, and she, Jeanne, had come of her own idea to get Marise. Marise read into this Jeanne's dislike of the nun and her usual suspicious idea about poor Maman that it was all just some new notion of hers. But she also felt that the old woman had had a real fright and she walked faster and faster.