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 fire-place 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 mantel-shelf.

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 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

For a week or two nothing occurred.  The father went fishing; Jean, with his mother’s help, was furnishing and settling himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at meal-times.

His father having asked him one evening:  “Why the deuce do you always com in with a face as cheerful as a funeral?  This is not the first time I have remarked it.”