understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly it
might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.
Mariotte's wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin's, three hundred.
But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have
induced either to leave the Guenic household. Both were under the
orders of Mademoiselle, who, from the time of the war in La Vendee to
the period of her brother's return, had ruled the house. When she
learned that the baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had
been moved to great emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre
of the household and abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose
subject she was now compelled to be.

Mademoiselle Zephirine was therefore agreeably surprised to find in
Fanny O'Brien a young woman born to the highest rank, to whom the
petty cares of a poor household were extremely distasteful,--one who,
like other fine souls, would far have preferred to eat plain bread
rather than the choicest food if she had to prepare it for herself; a
woman capable of accomplishing all the duties, even the most painful,
of humanity, strong under necessary privations, but without courage
for commonplace avocations. When the baron begged his sister in his
wife's name to continue in charge of the household, the old maid
kissed the baroness like a sister; she made a daughter of her, she
adored her, overjoyed to be left in control of the household, which
she managed rigorously on a system of almost inconceivable economy,
which was never relaxed except for some great occasion, such as the
lying-in of her sister, and her nourishment, and all that concerned
Calyste, the worshipped son of the whole household.

Though the two servants were accustomed to this stern regime, and no
orders need ever have been given to them, for the interests of their