“But is it certain?” said the mother.  “How could any woman help loving Calyste?”

“What other proof is needed than her staying on at Les Touches.  In all the twenty-four years since she came of age she has never stayed there so long as now; her visits to these parts, happily for us, were few and short.”

“A woman over forty years old!” exclaimed the baroness.  “I have heard say in Ireland that a woman of this description is the most dangerous mistress a young man can have.”

“As to that, I have no knowledge,” replied the rector, “and I shall die in my ignorance.”

“And I, too, alas!” said the baroness, naively.  “I wish now that I had loved with love, so as to understand and counsel and comfort Calyste.”

The rector did not cross the clean little court-yard alone; the baroness accompanied him to the gate, hoping to hear Calyste’s step coming through the town.  But she heard nothing except the heavy tread of the rector’s cautious feet, which grew fainter in the distance, and finally ceased when the closing of the door of the parsonage echoed behind him.

V

CALYSTE

The poor mother returned to the salon deeply distressed at finding that the whole town was aware of what she had thought was known to her alone.  She sat down, trimmed the wick of the lamp by cutting it with a pair of old scissors, took up once more the worsted-work she was doing, and awaited Calyste.  The baroness fondly hoped to induce her son by this means to come home earlier and spend less time with Mademoiselle des Touches.  Such calculations of maternal jealousy were wasted.  Day after day, Calyste’s visits to Les Touches became more frequent, and every night he came in later.  The night before the day of which we speak it was midnight when he returned.

The baroness, lost in maternal meditation, was setting her stitches with the rapidity of one absorbed in thought while engaged in manual labor.  Whoever had seen her bending to the light of the lamp beneath the quadruply centennial hangings of that ancient room would have admired the sublimity of the picture.  Fanny’s skin was so transparent that it was possible to read the thoughts that crossed her brow beneath it.  Piqued with a curiosity that often comes to a pure woman, she asked herself what devilish secrets these daughters of Baal possessed to so charm men as to make them forgetful of mother, family, country, and self-interests.  Sometimes she longed to meet this woman and judge her soberly for herself.  Her mind measured to its full extent the evils which the innovative spirit of the age—­described to her as so dangerous for young souls by the rector—­would have upon her only child, until then so guileless; as pure as an innocent girl, and beautiful with the same fresh beauty.