Huriel, urged by his sister, went off to his room to shave and dress, and I, left alone with Thérence, helped her to unpack her boxes and shake out the clothes, while Charlot, quite subdued, stood, with open mouth, looking on. When I had carried Huriel the clothes which Thérence piled on my arms, I returned to ask if she didn't mean to dress herself too, and to offer to take the child to walk while she did so. "As for me," she said, laying out her finery on her bed, "I will go if Brulette worries after me; but I will admit that if she would only forget me for a time, I would prefer to stay quietly here. In any case, I can be ready in a minute, and I need no one to escort me. I am accustomed to hunt up and get ready our lodgings in travelling, like a regular quartermaster on a campaign, and nothing disturbs me wherever I am." "Then you don't like dancing?" I said; "or is it shyness at making new acquaintances that makes you wish to stay at home?" "No, I don't like dancing," she replied; "nor the racket, nor the suppers, and particularly not the waste of time which brings weariness." "But one doesn't love dancing for dancing's sake only. Do you fear, or dislike, the attentions the young men pay to the girls?" "No, I have neither fear nor repugnance," she said, simply. "It does not amuse me, that is all. I am not witty, like Brulette. I don't know how to answer patly, nor how to make other people talk, and I can't be amusing. I am stupid and dreamy, and I am as much out of place in a lively company as a wolf or a fox at a dance." "You don't look like a wolf nor any other villanous beast, and you dance as gracefully as the willow branches when the breeze caresses them--" I don't know what more I was going to say, when Huriel came out of his room, handsome as the sun and more in a hurry to get off than I was, for I should have been just as satisfied to stay with his sister. She kept him a moment to straighten his cravat and to tie his garters at the knee, apparently not thinking him jaunty enough to dance through the wedding with Brulette, and as she did so she said: "Tell me, why were you so jealous of her dancing with any one but you? Were not you afraid of frightening her with such masterful orders?" "Tiennet!" exclaimed Huriel, stopping short in what he was doing, and taking Charlot, whom he placed on the table and gazed at with all his eyes, "Whose child is this?" Thérence, astonished, first asked him what he meant by the question, and then asked me why I did not answer it.