it. "She is getting unpunctual. Can it be that the fashion of
dissipation is contagious? I see that Monsieur le chevalier is again
at Les Touches this evening."

"Don't say anything about those visits before Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel," cried the old maid, eagerly.

"Ah! mademoiselle," remarked Mariotte, "you can't prevent the town
from gossiping."

"What do they say?" asked the baroness.

"The young girls and the old women all say that he is in love with
Mademoiselle des Touches."

"A lad of Calyste's make is playing his proper part in making the
women love him," said the baron.

"Here comes Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel," said Mariotte.

The gravel in the court-yard crackled under the discreet footsteps of
the coming lady, who was accompanied by a page supplied with a
lantern. Seeing this lad, Mariotte removed her stool to the great hall
for the purpose of talking with him by the gleam of his rush-light,
which was burned at the cost of his rich and miserly mistress, thus
economizing those of her own masters.

This elderly demoiselle was a thin, dried-up old maid, yellow as the
parchment of a Parliament record, wrinkled as a lake ruffled by the
wind, with gray eyes, large prominent teeth, and the hands of a man.