"I will not stay here without you!" cried Gilberte, rising and running after the carpenter, as he walked toward the door. "Mademoiselle--or madame," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, stopping her and detaining the carpenter also, "please listen to me, and if you know nothing of the strange thoughts that assail me at this moment, forgive an agitation which must seem very absurd to you, but which is very painful to me, I assure you! I owe you an explanation of it, however. Jean just gave me to understand that you were not the person that I supposed--but another person--whom I do not wish to see or to know. _Mon Dieu_! I don't know how to tell you. Either you understand me too well or you cannot understand me at all." "Ah! I understand you at last," said the crafty carpenter, "and I will tell madame what you cannot succeed in explaining to her.--Madame Rose," he continued, turning to Gilberte and resolutely giving her the name of the curé of Cuzion's sister, "you know Mademoiselle Gilberte de Châteaubrun, your young neighbor? Well, monsieur le marquis has a great grudge against her, so it seems; we must believe that she has offended him shamefully; and just as I was going to tell him something about you and Emile----" "What do you say?" cried the marquis. "Emile?" "This doesn't concern you," retorted Jean: "I shall tell you nothing more, I am speaking to Madame Rose. Yes, Madame Rose, Monsieur de Boisguilbault detests Mademoiselle Gilberte; he has taken it into his head that you might be she; that is why he wanted to put you out--by the window in preference to the door." Gilberte felt a mortal distaste for continuing this extraordinary and audacious mystification; for some minutes past, she had been conscious of such a warm feeling of sympathy for the marquis, that she reproached herself for abusing his error and subjecting him to emotions which seemed to make him suffer as keenly as she herself suffered. She determined to disabuse him gradually, and to be bolder than her facetious companion in daring to face the results of Monsieur de Boisguilbault's wrath. "There is at least one enigma for me in what you tell me," she said with dignified assurance. "I cannot understand how Gilberte de Châteaubrun can be an object of reprobation on the part of a man so just and so worthy of respect as Monsieur de Boisguilbault. As I know nothing of her which can justify such detestation, and as it is important that I should know what to think about her, I beg monsieur le marquis to tell me all the evil that he knows of her, so that she may at least have an opportunity to exculpate herself in the minds of honorable people who know her." "I should have preferred," said the marquis, with a profound sigh, "that the name of Châteaubrun should not be mentioned before me." "Is it a name upon which there is any stain, I pray to know," demanded Gilberte, with an irresistible outburst of pride.