Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will
purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good--It is for
you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an
injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies,
I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle:
that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time,
Mademoiselle."

Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she
listened to Aimée. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then
fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:

"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love
for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and
the trunks of the great trees."

Old Aimée shook her stick on the floor with rage.

"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good curé,
who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then
the Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall
save you from them?"

The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress
dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou
when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"

"What is it," demanded Aimée, with increasing shrillness, "that you have
told the child Marie about my grandson?"