Did not all the village say that it was Suzanne’s doing that Firman’s sister left the farm on his marriage? That Suzanne’s jealousy had driven Jeanne-Marie away? And when this came to the ears of Firman’s wife, and the old folks shook their heads in her presence over the strange doings of young couples now-a-days, the relief that the dreaded division of supremacy with her husband’s sister was spared her, was lost in anger against Jeanne-Marie, as the cause of this village scandal. The jealousy that she had always felt for the “chère sœur,” whom Firman loved and respected, leapt up within her. “People say he loves his sister, and that it is I who part them; they shall see--yes, they shall see.” And bit by bit, with all a woman’s subtle diplomacy, she drew her husband away from his sister’s affection, until in a year or two their close intimacy had weakened to a gradually slackening friendship. At night-time, when Firman’s passionate southern nature lay under the thrall of his wife’s beauty, she would whisper to him in her soft _patois_, “Love me well, my husband, for I have only you to love; others are jealous of my happiness, and even Jeanne-Marie is envious of your wife, and of the babe that is to come.” And the hot Spanish blood, that his mother had given him, would leap to Firman’s face as he took her in his arms, and swore that all he loved, loved her; and those who angered her, he cared not for. In the first year of their marriage, when Jeanne-Marie came almost every day, Suzanne would show her with pride all the changes and alterations in the old house. “See here, my sister,” she said to her one day, only six months after the wedding, when she was taking her over the house, “this room that was yours, we have dismantled for the time; did it not seem a pity to keep an unused room all furnished, for the sun to tarnish, and the damp to spoil?” And Jeanne-Marie, as she looked round on the bare walls and the empty corners of the little room, where she and Catherine had slept together in the old days, answered quietly, “Quite true, Suzanne, quite true; it would be a great pity.” That night when she and Marthe sat together in the kitchen she told her of the incident. “But, Jeanne-Marie,” Marthe interrupted eagerly, “how was it you had left your furniture there, since it was yours?” “How was it? But because little Catherine had slept in the old bed, and sat in the old chairs, and how could I take them away from the room?” “Better that than let Suzanne break them up for firewood,” Marthe replied shortly. When little Henri was born, a year after the marriage, Suzanne would not let Jeanne-Marie be at the _métairie_, and she sent Firman down beforehand to tell her that she feared the excitement of her presence. Jeanne-Marie knew she was disliked and distrusted; but this blow fell very heavily: though she raised her head proudly and looked her brother full in the face when he stammered out his wife’s wishes.