This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended for Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor, who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five steps, met his mother's look at each turn. It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness, intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to himself--at once tortured and glad: "She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And each time he reached the fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to look at Marechal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening, suddenly brought into this house and this family. Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Rosemilly"; and her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf. Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know and understand everything. He was seized with a dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen by his father and brother. When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim, and haggard. "Good evening," said Mme. Rosemilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup of tea." But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health, Pierre made off, the door having been left open. When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a bear!" Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville." "Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off like a savage." Mme. Rosemilly tried to smooth matters by saying: "Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion; people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they want to leave early." "Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man does not treat his family _a l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done nothing else for some time past." CHAPTER VI