“Since then, I have received another letter, a few months ago, in which she told me that her husband was dead and that she was on her way to me with all the money she owed me.” “Well?” “Nothing but lies! Nobody came. Do people like that come and pay back the money they have stolen! No, they were a couple of thieves. You ask anybody at Domfront about M. and Mme. Despriol: a nice reputation they left behind them! If either of them thought of coming back here, they’d be stoned in the streets! Henriette indeed! Why, I should spit in her face, that I would, the sneak, the hypocrite!...” She uttered those words with an accent of implacable hatred charged with all the rancour of those fifteen years of poverty and privation. Gilberte shuddered. The evil expression on that face filled her with a sort of repugnance. Nevertheless, she took Mme. de la Vaudraye’s hand and, raising it to her lips, murmured: “You poor dear!” And she did this not designedly, because it was Guillaume’s mother whom she was conciliating, but from an undefined and all-powerful instinct that compelled her to be kind to this humiliated and disappointed woman. It was the same instinct which had guided her hitherto and which made her still more attentive and affectionate in the days that followed, notwithstanding a certain sense of constraint which she felt in Mme. de la Vaudraye’s presence. She knew no greater pleasure than to smooth the wrinkles from those sullen features at the moment when they were most firmly set; and to do this she employed all sorts of childish rogueries: “Come, try hard and laugh.... There, you have laughed!” Mme. de la Vaudraye was touched by all this charm of manner. It made her neglect the artificial plan of conduct which she had arranged to captivate the girl: she forgot to conceal her faults, she even became natural and spontaneous. One day, after something that Gilberte had said, with a sudden movement she drew the girl to her: “Oh, my darling, what a treasure of a wife you would make!” Gilberte smiled: “Indeed! How do I know that you would have me for a daughter!... However, we shall soon see ... perhaps to-morrow....” “To-morrow?” “Why, of course! Isn’t this the day when Guillaume is coming to the trysting-place where I wait for him every day?” “Guillaume? I had a letter from him this morning from Paris. Besides, I know him; when he has made up his mind....” Gilberte looked at her watch: “Five o’clock. Suppose he were there now!... Ah, I have a feeling that he is there to-day, that I shall see him!... Good-bye till to-morrow.” She hastened away swiftly, leaving her companion speechless. Hope filled her breast, a hope each time disappointed, but never discouraged. “Mme. Armand is coming back alone this afternoon,” said the people at Domfront. “What a hurry she’s in!”