Her baby confided to the wild Leon's charge, tossed about in a yacht with not a woman on board to take care of it, her fragile little daughter, on whom the wind had never been allowed to blow, now at the mercy of wind and waves for days, and then, supposing the child was alive, which in her present mood the baroness declared to be impossible, even if it were, not to know where it was till Leon came back, perhaps for a week or more, for the baron dare not tell her it would probably be a month before he returned--oh, it was unbearable! She was sure she could neither eat nor sleep until she had her baby back. Life until then would be a burden to her. What could she do without it? Already she was sure it knew her; and oh, how happy she had been watching by its cradle! If Arnaud only knew how she delighted in nursing and playing with it, even to gaze on it while it slept was a joy to her! Oh, if he only understood, he would never have been so cruel as to send it away. All the baron's arguments as to the advantages to the baby which were to be derived from his scheme, and the wonderful health and strength it was to derive from leading a less luxurious life, failed to reassure the baroness, and she passed a sleepless night, and looked so ill and miserable the next morning that the baron was angry with her for looking ill, and with himself for being the cause. No one in the house but the baroness had been told the night before what had become of the baby, the general opinion being that it had been taken or sent to some woman in the neighbourhood to look after; but when it became known that it was sent away in Leon's charge no one knew where, the sympathy with the baroness was universal, and the baron found himself looked upon as a jealous tyrant, with no real love for either his wife or child. "A nice father you are," cried his brother Jacques. "The idea of trusting Leon with a baby. Why, he will pitch it overboard if it cries," said little Louis, a remark which so annoyed the baron that he promptly seized Louis by the collar and turned him out of the room. "You really must have been mad, Arnaud, to dream of such a thing as entrusting Leon, of all people in the world, with an infant," said the old baroness, for once taking the part of her daughter-in-law against her son. Pere Yvon said nothing just then; it would not have been wise to have done so while the baron's temper was ruffled by the criticisms of his family or in their presence, but when he was alone with Arnaud, Pere Yvon spoke his mind pretty freely, and read the baron a severer lecture than he had ever done all the years he was under his tuition.