Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to shield her vision from the frightful picture.

“O Heaven! what is that you say?  It is cruel of you to destroy all the pleasure of my morning in this way.  No, no; I won’t think of such things.  They are too mournful.”

Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anxiety.  She was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte’s father, Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene-Populeux.  The little maid was not nine years old, and already she was a consummate actress—­a perfect type of the village coquette, queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old finery she could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and tiaras made from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate.  She had not changed a bit when, later, at the age of twenty, she married Maginot, the inspector of woods and forests.  Mezieres, a dark, gloomy town, surrounded by ramparts, was not to her taste, and she continued to live at Charleville, where the gay, generous life, enlivened by many festivities, suited her better.  Her father was dead, and with a husband whom, by reason of his inferior social position, her friends and acquaintances treated with scant courtesy, she was absolutely mistress of her own actions.  She did not escape the censure of the stern moralists who inhabit our provincial cities, and in those days was credited with many lovers; but of the gay throng of officers who, thanks to her father’s old connection and her kinship to Colonel de Vineuil, disported themselves in her drawing-room, Captain Beaudoin was the only one who had really produced an impression.  She was light and frivolous—­nothing more—­adoring pleasure and living entirely in the present, without the least trace of perverse inclination; and if she accepted the captain’s attentions, it is pretty certain that she did it out of good-nature and love of admiration.

“You did very wrong to see him again,” Henriette finally said, in her matter-of-fact way.

“Oh! my dear, since I could not possibly do otherwise, and it was only for just that once.  You know very well I would die rather than deceive my new husband.”

She spoke with much feeling, and seemed distressed to see her friend shake her head disapprovingly.  They dropped the subject, and clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, notwithstanding their diametrically different natures.  Each could hear the beating of the other’s heart, and they might have understood the tongues those organs spoke—­one, the slave of pleasure, wasting and squandering all that was best in herself; the other, with the mute heroism of a lofty soul, devoting herself to a single ennobling affection.