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 does it happen that you have given me my dismissal the very day after your interview with the cure ?" Reine, knowing Claudet's violent disposition, and wishing to avoid trouble for the cure, thought it advisable to have recourse to evasion.
"Monsieur le Cure," said she, "has had no part in my decision.

He has not spoken against you, and deserves no reproaches from you." "In that case, why do you send me away ?" "I repeat again, the comfort and peace of my father are paramount with me, and I do not intend to marry so long as he may have need of me." "Well," said Claudet, persistently, "I love you, and I will wait." "It can not be." "Why ?" "Because," replied she, sharply, "because it would be kind neither to you, nor to my father, nor to me.