This year the winter at Charville set in with strange fits and starts. The owners of thermometers took a proud delight in electrifying their neighbours by reports of sudden rises and falls in their favourite study. There came sharp frosts, even snow. The river flowed like an inky stream between white banks; icicles froze round the stone fountain; there was what old Nannon called a _jolie gelee_--a certain keen, bitter beauty in the harmonies of white and grey, in the snow-laden boughs, in the great sweep of plain and sky. The women clattered home from market, instead of staying to gossip by the way. Little Dutch-like children, with shrieks of ecstasy, made slides down the steep streets, to the peril of the limbs of passers-by; old people crouched round the stoves, to get what warmth they could in their miserable houses. Instead of this weather lasting, however, there followed abrupt thaws, soft damp days, quite unlike the time of year. The Charville people hardly knew what to make of it. "The cold is unpleasant, but when one has made up one's mind, it may as well come," grumbled old Andre, the wood-cutter. That is the way with some of us. We are half angry when the evil we have prognosticated is mercifully averted. On one of these mild afternoons Madame Roulleau took her two children to pay a visit of ceremony; Octavie arrayed in a silk frock, which had been sent to Therese with her other possessions--not many--from Ardron, and which she had cut up for Octavie in those first days when she hoped to please. Little Roulleau was in his office; Nannon came to the door to find out whether mademoiselle wanted her, and at the same moment arrived Monsieur Deshoulieres. "_Bonjour_, Nannon," he said, cheerfully. "So mademoiselle is in the house?" "She may have gone out with Madame Roulleau," replied Nannon with unblushing promptitude. "As monsieur sees, I have just come." "No, I saw madame and her children in the distance. Have the goodness to ask mademoiselle to give me the pleasure of five minutes' conversation in the _salon_." "What eyes he has!" muttered Nannon to herself, going unwillingly up the stairs on her errand. "And yet they are as blue as the very cornflowers. What does he come here frightening that poor child for, I should be glad to know! A man so hard as he has no right to have eyes like that.--If mademoiselle pleases I will say I cannot find her." "Monsieur Deshoulieres!" said Therese, crumpling together the work on her lap with a quick, agitated movement, when Nannon made her announcement. "Shall you see him? Beware, then, mademoiselle. I know these men. Do not yield a thing, or the convent will be thrust down your throat." "I do not think I care," the girl said, rising wearily, "nothing can be worse than this life." "Am I to come with you, then, or shall I go on with the work? _Dame_! do they give you such holes to mend!"