"Because I should be a trouble to everybody over yonder. I am a person that suits only herself. I don't know how to win the good will of other people. I don't keep a cat or a dog, because I don't want to love anything. Besides, I have many disagreeable habits. I use snuff, and I can't agree with anybody. I am best left to myself, your ladyship." "But what will become of you when both your master and mistress are gone from the castle?" "I shall do what I have always done, your ladyship. The Herr Count promised that I should never want for anything to cook so long as I lived." "Don't misunderstand me, Lisette. I did not ask how you intended to live. What I meant was, how are you going to get on when you do not see or hear any one--when you are all alone here?" "I am not afraid to be alone. I have no money, and I don't think anybody would undertake to carry _me_ off! I am never lonely. I can't read,--for which I thank God!--so that never bothers me. I don't like to knit; for ever since I saw those terrible women sitting around the guillotine and knitting, knitting, knitting all day long, I can't bear to see the motion of five needles. So I just amuse myself with these cards; and I don't need anything else." "But surely your heart will grow sore when you do not see your little mistress daily?" "Daily--daily, your ladyship? This is the second time I have laid eyes on her face in six years! There was a time when I saw her daily, hourly--when she needed me all the time. Is not that so, my little mistress? Don't you remember how I had a little son, and how he called me _chère maman_, and I called him _mon petit garçon_?" As she spoke, she laid the cards one by one on her snowy apron. She looked intently at them for several moments, then continued: "No; I don't need to know anything, only that she is safe. _She_ will always be carefully guarded from all harm, and my cards will always tell me all I need know about _mon petit garçon_. No, your ladyship; I shall not go with you; I cannot leave the place where my poor Henry died." "Poor Lisette! what a tender heart is yours!" "Mine?" suddenly and with unusual energy interrupted Lisette. "Mine a tender heart? Ask this little lady here--who cannot tell a lie--if I am not the woman who has the hardest, the most unfeeling heart in all the world. Ask her that, your ladyship. Tell her, _mon petit garçon_," she added, turning to Marie,--"tell the lady it is as I say." "Lisette--dear Lisette," remonstrated Marie. "Have you ever seen me weep?" demanded the woman. "No, Lisette; but--" "Did I ever sigh," interrupted Lisette, "or moan, or grieve, that time when we spent many days and nights together in one room?" "No, no; never, Lisette." The woman turned in her chair to a chest that stood by her side, opened it, and took out a package carefully wrapped first in paper, then in a linen cloth. When she had removed the wrappings, she held up in her hands a child's chemise and petticoat.