These two old persons brought out in fine relief the beauty of the baroness.  Mademoiselle Zephirine, being deprived of sight, was not aware of the changes which eighty years had wrought in her features.  Her pale, hollow face, to which the fixedness of the white and sightless eyes gave almost the appearance of death, and three or four solitary and projecting teeth made menacing, was framed by a little hood of brown printed cotton, quilted like a petticoat, trimmed with a cotton ruche, and tied beneath the chin by strings which were always a little rusty.  She wore a cotillon, or short skirt of coarse cloth, over a quilted petticoat (a positive mattress, in which were secreted double louis-d’ors), and pockets sewn to a belt which she unfastened every night and put on every morning like a garment.  Her body was encased in the casaquin of Brittany, a species of spencer made of the same cloth as the cotillon, adorned with a collarette of many pleats, the washing of which caused the only dispute she ever had with her sister-in-law,—­her habit being to change it only once a week.  From the large wadded sleeves of the casaquin issued two withered but still vigorous arms, at the ends of which flourished her hands, their brownish-red color making the white arms look like poplar-wood.  These hands, hooked or contracted from the habit of knitting, might be called a stocking-machine incessantly at work; the phenomenon would have been had they stopped.  From time to time Mademoiselle du Guenic took a long knitting needle which she kept in the bosom of her gown, and passed it between her hood and her hair to poke or scratch her white locks.  A stranger would have laughed to see the careless manner in which she thrust back the needle without the slightest fear of wounding herself.  She was straight as a steeple.  Her erect and imposing carriage might pass for one of those coquetries of old age which prove that pride is a necessary passion of life.  Her smile was gay.  She, too, had done her duty.

As soon as the baroness saw that her husband was asleep she stopped reading.  A ray of sunshine, stretching from one window to the other, divided by a golden band the atmosphere of that old room and burnished the now black furniture.  The light touched the carvings of the ceiling, danced on the time-worn chests, spread its shining cloth on the old oak table, enlivening the still, brown room, as Fanny’s voice cast into the heart of her octogenarian blind sister a music as luminous and as cheerful as that ray of sunlight.  Soon the ray took on the ruddy colors which, by insensible gradations, sank into the melancholy tones of twilight.  The baroness also sank into a deep meditation, one of those total silences which her sister-in-law had noticed for the last two weeks, trying to explain them to herself, but making no inquiry.  The old woman studied the causes of this unusual pre-occupation, as blind persons, on whose soul sound lingers like a divining echo, read books in which the pages are black and the letters white.  Mademoiselle Zephirine, to whom the dark hour now meant nothing, continued to knit, and the silence at last became so deep that the clicking of her knitting-needles was plainly heard.