How wearisome it all was! Where was the use in trying to uncover the hidden springs of acts accomplished? She could see nothing through the carriage window except the reflection of her pale expressionless face. There came a sudden break in the monotonous rhythm of the little train: the engine gave a prolonged whistle and cautiously drew in to a station. An arm held up a swaying lantern: there followed shouted utterances in the local dialect, and squeals from sundry pigs that were being taken off the train: Uzeste already. One more station and then Saint Clair: thence she must drive the rest of the way to Argelouse. Thérèse had very little time left to prepare her defence. CHAPTER III Argelouse is literally one of the ends of the earth,--one of those places beyond which you cannot go; in those parts they call them “_Quartiers_.” A few farms, with no church or cemetery, scattered round a field of rye, over five miles from the market-town of Saint Clair, with which it is connected by a single road in very bad repair. This road, such as it is, fades away beyond Argelouse into sandy tracks: and thence, until the sea, there is nothing but fifty miles of marshes, lagoons, young pines, and sandy heath; and by the end of winter the very sheep look as grey as that bleak landscape. The best families in Saint Clair come from these lost lands. Towards the middle of the last century, when the sale of resin and timber began to swell their scanty profits from flocks and herds, the grandparents of those living to-day moved to Saint Clair, and their ancestral homes at Argelouse were used as farm buildings. The carved beams of the gables, and here and there a marble mantelpiece, bore witness to their ancient dignity. Every year they came nearer to collapse, and one of the roofs had sagged lower and lower until its eaves nearly touched the ground. Two of these ancient habitations, however, still housed their proprietors. The Larroque and the Desqueyroux families left their homes at Argelouse just as they had received them from their predecessors. Jerôme Larroque, Mayor and County Councillor of B., whose principal residence was just outside that small provincial town, would never allow any alterations at the estate at Argelouse, which had come to him through his wife (who had died in child-bed while Thérèse was still a baby), and where he thought it quite natural that his young daughter should like to spend her holidays. She used to go there at the beginning of July, under the tutelage of an elder sister of her father’s, one Aunt Clara, a deaf old maid, who also liked the lonely place because, as she used to say, she did not have to be constantly watching people’s lips to make out what they were saying, and because she knew that there was nothing to listen to except the wind in the pines. Monsieur Larroque was pleased, because Argelouse relieved him of his daughter’s company and brought her into contact with Bernard