It was all unsatisfactory, provoking. Even the doctor's impatient spirit was forced to acknowledge that nothing could be done for the present. His hands were tied by the terms of the will, he could only wait and trust that such little strings as he had set going would some day tug M. Fabien Saint-Martin into Charville. Without any particular reason for the feeling, he disliked him heartily, but, nevertheless, it was to be hoped he would come and deliver them from this tangle of perplexities. There was no more to be said about Fabien in this interview, but Therese's future remained to be settled. M. Deshoulieres fidgeted and fussed on his chair. "Is this house agreeable to you? Would you like to stay?" he said at last, shooting out the words quite suddenly. Therese, who had been the one most troubled in the conversation, grew self-possessed when she found her own prospects under consideration. "Do you mean, like to live here?" she asked. "It would do as well as any other place." "You would not prefer the convent?" "Oh, Monsieur, not--not the convent!" she exclaimed, with all the trouble returning. Her grey eyes dilated, she put out her hands imploringly. "No one will force you," said M. Deshoulieres, in a kind, reassuring voice, but he did not understand this sudden terror. Looking upon it as a natural retreat for unmarried girls, he had thought it not unlikely she might herself suggest it. He was sorry that she shrank from it, and it surprised him a little. Nevertheless, had she but known it, she was quite safe from any attempt to thwart her inclinations; but she did not know it. Her early experience of her uncle's unrelenting will led her to expect everywhere the same harshness, the same determination. What M. Deshoulieres had once suggested he might at any time attempt to oblige her to follow out; and to be buried in a convent, to lose all hope of seeing Fabien, of hearing a word here, a word there, a rumour of his whereabouts--to lose this was to twenty-year old Therese like losing life itself. She would have preferred any hardship to this prospect, which had hung over her while her uncle lived, and was, probably, only prevented from taking shape by a certain half-contemptuous indulgence of his wife's wishes, and after her death by a softening consciousness of his own failing health. Now it surged up before her again; M. Deshoulieres' words could not calm her fears. "Only let me stay here," she entreated. He looked at her a little keenly. It was something new to have any one dependent upon him, half pleasant, half puzzling--then he thought of his patients and jumped up. "That is soon settled, mademoiselle; I will speak to Madame Roulleau, and then you can arrange things as you please. Pardon me now, for my time is not my own."