The piteous glance
of the dying woman followed all her comings and goings, but she
pretended not to see it. Once, when her father was out of the room, her
mother called Jeanne to the bedside:
"You know?" she asked.
Jeanne only nodded her head in reply.
"Child, I am dying, forgive me."
But Jeanne moved away from the bed without answering the appeal.
No sooner had the doctor pronounced life to be extinct than she felt a
strange anxiety. In her great desire to atone in some way for her past
harshness, the girl resolved that, no matter what befell her, she would
do her best to hide the truth from her father.
That night she entered the room where the dead woman lay, and ransacked
every box and drawer until she found the letters she was seeking. They
were at the bottom of her mother's jewel-case. Quickly she took
possession of them; but just as she was replacing the case in its
accustomed place, her father came in, having heard her moving about. She
could offer no explanation of her presence, and had to listen in silence
to his bitter accusation: "Are you so crazy about trinkets that you
cannot wait until your poor mother is laid in her grave?"
In the course of that year one of the chemist's apprentices seduced her.
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