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Updated: June 19, 2025
I scanned her very carefully; and secretly, if the truth be told, I was glad to find that Madame de Cocheforet was such a woman. I was glad that she had laughed as she had with a ring of disdain and defiance; glad that she was not a little, tender, child-like woman, to be crushed by the first pinch of trouble. For if I succeeded in my task, if I contrived to but, pish!
NOM DE DIEU! What did the woman mean by telling me all this? To meet me in such a way, to disarm one by such methods, was to take an unfair advantage. It put a vile ay, the vilest aspect, on the work I had to do. Yet it was very odd! What could M. de Cocheforet mean by returning so soon, if M. de Cocheforet was here?
The next moment, appearing with a suddenness which was like a blow on the cheek to me, Mademoiselle de Cocheforet glided forward towards me.
Before me, alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale, the next crimson with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforet. I cried out her name. 'M. de Berault, she said, trembling. 'You did not expect to see me? 'I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle, I answered, striving to recover my composure.
'I fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts in this world! Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow mountains that here limit France.
'This is my sister, Madame de Cocheforet said, with a very slight air of condescension, 'Will you please to tell me your name, Monsieur? 'I am M. de Barthe, a gentleman of Normandy, I said, taking on impulse the name of my mother. My own, by a possibility, might be known. Madame's face wore a puzzled look. 'I do not know that name, I think, she said thoughtfully.
'Hush, Mademoiselle, hush! I said, almost roughly. 'You hurt me. You have made me happy; and yet I wish that you were not here, where, I fear, you have few friends, but back at Cocheforet. You have done more for me than I expected, and a hundred times more than I deserved. But it must end here. I was a ruined man before this happened, before I ever saw you.
Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give orders there to have these two fetched and buried. I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so, after another word or two, it was arranged. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforet helped his sister to mount, and within five minutes we were gone.
And life at Cocheforet was all after the pattern of this dinner. Each day, I might almost say each meal, gave rise to the same sequence of thoughts. In Clon's presence, or when some word of Madame's, unconsciously harsh, reminded me of the distance between us, I was myself.
You deceived yourself so skilfully that we had no need to trick you. 'Mademoiselle, then? I muttered. 'Is Madame! she cried. 'Yes, and I am Mademoiselle de Cocheforet. And in that character, and in all others, I beg from this moment to close our acquaintance, sir.
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