I do not wish to reproach you, but you gave me trouble enough; you were a most wayward, capricious, and fantastic creature, a spoiled child--" "Aunt," interrupted Clemence, with heightened color in her pale cheeks, "you have told me of my faults often enough for me to know them, and, if they were not corrected, it was not your fault, for you never spared me scoldings.

If I had not been so unfortunate as to lose my mother when I was a baby, I should not have given you so much trouble." Tears came into the young woman's eyes, but she had enough control over herself to keep them from streaming down her burning cheeks.

Taking a journal from the table, she opened it, in order to conceal her emotion and to put an end to this conversation, which had become painful to her.

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, on her side, carefully replaced her eye-glasses upon her nose, and, solemnly stretching herself upon her chair, she turned over the leaves of the 'Gazette de France,' which she had neglected so long.
Silence reigned for some moments in the room.

The aunt apparently read the paper very attentively.