That night Gabrielle and her foster-sister slept together, or rather lay in the same bed, for Toinon had much to tell and Gabrielle to hear. In the morning, the chatelaine looked much the same as usual, but for the circle of bistre round her eyes, which had grown deeper, giving an air of lassitude. Virginie, Maréchale de Brèze, never slept a wink; but groaned and tossed in a fever, mumbling Ave Marias, and when she appeared at déjeuner, the abbé shook a reproachful finger at her. "Yellow!" he declared, mournfully, "absolutely and undeniably yellow! How dare you, after all our care, look so jaded, when yesterday you were as blooming as a rose? I know what it is. Try this pear--it absolutely melts in the mouth. No. I won't offer it, for I am afraid it smells of copper. Or is it brimstone? How provoking! I have tucked my hoofs and tail under my chair, but I cannot conceal the brimstone! Look at your lovely daughter. She knows better than to believe _cancans_, and has slept the sleep of the angels. Alas--dearest mother--you have permitted me to call you mother--I shall have to administer a severe and terrible lecture. I told you last night you were our prisoner, but I won't have birds that injure their delightful plumage. If you beat your wings against the bars I shall open the cage-door, I warn you, and dismiss you into space!" Turned out into space among the ravening wolves without, or kept in the gilded cage to be slowly done to death? What an alternative! Why could not somebody tell her what to do, instead of leaving her all night stretched upon the rack of her uncertainty? Evidently, unless candidates for an asylum, they must all have some motive for acting in the odd way they did, but what was it? It was so rude and inconsiderate to be plotting, and scheming, and lying, and charging each other with all kinds of horrible offences, under the nose of an innocent stranger, of whom they were making a butt. Madame made up her mind to upbraid Gabrielle severely for her inhuman and unfilial conduct. If there was any nasty skeleton about, she had no business to summon an aged parent to contemplate it. Toinon, plunged into a slough of anguish, could only wring her hands and moan. It is not every David who can get the better of Goliath; and is it not wiser to flee before the great towering monster, instead of hurling our puny stone at him--only to be trodden in a trice under his ponderous splay foot?