Jeanne's face darkened. "Keep a civiller tongue in thy head," she
replied, "than to be talking to widows of the husbands they have buried.
He was a good man, Willan Blaycke,--a good man; but I liked him not
overmuch, though we lived not in quarrelling. He went his ways, as men
go, and I let him be."

Victorine's curiosity was by no means satisfied. She asked endless
questions of all whom she met who could tell her anything about her
aunt's husband. Very much she regretted that she had not been taken from
the convent before this strange, free-hearted, rollicking gentleman had
died. She would have managed affairs better, she thought, than Aunt
Jeanne had done. Romantic visions of herself as his favorite flitted
through her brain.

"Why didst thou not send for me sooner to come to thee, Aunt Jeanne,"
she said, "that I too might have seen the life in the great stone
house?"

A sudden flush covered Jeanne's face. Was she never to hear the end of
troublesome questions about the past?

"Wilt thou never have done with it?" she said, half angrily. "Has it
never been said in thy hearing how that my husband would not permit even
my father to come inside of his house, much less one no nearer than
thou?" And Jeanne eyed Victorine sharply, with a suspicion which was
wholly uncalled for. Nobody had ever been bold or cruel enough to
suggest to Victorine any doubts regarding her birth. The girl was
indignant. She had never known before that her grandfather had been thus
insulted.