"That is to say, you won't have me!" he exclaimed.

"No; my poor friend, it means only that I shall not marry so long as my
father is living, and that I can not ask you to wait until I am perfectly
free. Forgive me for having entered into the engagement too carelessly,
and do not on that account take your friendship from me."

"Reine," interrupted Claudet, angrily, "don't turn your brain inside out
to make me believe that night is broad day. I am not a child, and I see
very well that your father's health is only a pretext. You don't want
me, that's all, and, with all due respect, you have changed your mind
very quickly! Only the day before yesterday you authorized me to arrange
about the day for the ceremony with the Abbe Pernot. Now that you have
had a visit from the cure, you want to put the affair off until the week
when two Sundays come together! I am a little curious to know what that
confounded old abbe has been babbling about me, to turn you inside out
like a glove in such a short time."

Claudet's conscience reminded him of several rare frolics, chance love-
affairs, meetings in the woods, and so on, and he feared the priest might
have told Reine some unfavorable stories about him. "Ah!" he continued,
clenching his fists, "if this old poacher in a cassock has done me an ill
turn with you, he will not have much of a chance for paradise!"

"Undeceive yourself," said Reine, quickly, "Monsieur le Cure is your
friend, like myself; he esteems you highly, and never has said anything
but good of you."

"Oh, indeed!" sneered the young man, "as you are both so fond of me, how