Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/260

 and made her resolution for the future, she seemed to feel the very fibres of her heart break within her.

Firman came down next day to beg his sister to behave as if nothing had happened. "You are pale and your face is all drawn, chѐre soeur," he told her reproachfully; "but you must not take the things like that. If poor Suzanne were herself and well, she would never have spoken as she did." But Jeanne-Marie smiled at him.

"If I am pale, Firman, it is not for worrying over Suzanne. Tell her from me, I have been selfish all this time. I will not be so again. When she can spare the little Henri, she shall send him to play here with me, by Anna." Anna was Suzanne's sixteen-year-old sister, who lived almost entirely at the métairie since her sister's marriage. "And every Sunday afternoon I will come up, and will sit with him in the garden as I used to do. Tell this to Suzanne, with my love."

And Firman told her; and mingled with the relief that Suzanne felt, that the face and figure which had become like a nightmare to her strained nerves, would appear only once a week at the farm, was gratitude that her sister had taken things so well. "Anna shall take him every other day," she observed to Firman, "she shall see I am not jealous; it was the pain that took me suddenly yesterday, while you were speaking. For that matter, in the afternoon there is always much for me to do, and little Henri can very well go with Anna to the cottage."

And no doubt she meant to keep her promise, but she was occupied mind and body with other things. The second baby would be born in a month, and in the afternoons, when she sat, languid and tired, she liked to have her sister Anna by her, and Henri playing by her side.

And after little Catherine was born, there was much for Anna