nobody but their mother could tell them apart, except by their clothes.
So the winds of gossiping breaths blew both ways at once in the matter,
and it was much discussed for a time. But like all scandals, as soon as
it became an old story nobody cared whether it were false or true; and
before Victorine had been a year at the Golden Pear, the question of her
relationship there was rarely raised.

One thing was certain, that no mother could have been fonder or more
devoted to a child than Jeanne was to her niece; and everybody said
so,--some more civilly, some maliciously. Her pride in the girl's beauty
was touching to see. She seemed to have forgotten that she was ever a
beauty herself; and she had no need to do this, for Jeanne was not yet
forty, and many men found her piquant and pleasing still. But all her
vanity seemed now to be transferred to Victorine. It was Victorine who
was to have all the fine gowns and ornaments; Victorine who must go to
the dances and fêtes in costumes which were the wonder and the envy of
all the girls in the region; Victorine who was to have everything made
easy and comfortable for her in the house; and above all,--and here the
mother betrayed herself, for mother she was; the truth may as well be
told early as late in our story,--most of all, it was Victorine who was
to be kept away from the bar, and to be spared all contact with the
rough roysterers who frequented the Golden Pear.

Very ingenious were Jeanne's excuses for these restrictions on her
niece's liberty. Still more ingenious her explanations of the occasional
exceptions she made now and then in favor of some well-to-do young
farmer of the neighborhood, or some traveller in whom her alert maternal
eye detected a possible suitor for Victorine's hand. Victorine herself
was not so fastidious. She was young, handsome, overflowing with
vitality, and with no more conscience or delicacy than her mother had