She had lost--alas! how can we communicate it in English!--a small piece of lute-string ribbon, about _so long_, which she used for--not a necktie exactly, but-- And she hunted and hunted, and couldn't bear to give up the search, and sat down to breakfast and ate nothing, and rose up and searched again (not that she cared for the omen), and struck the hound with the broom, and broke the broom, and hunted again, and looked out the front window, and saw the rain beginning to fall, and dropped into a chair--crying, "Oh! Clotilde, my child, my child! the rent collector will be here Saturday and turn us into the street!" and so fell a-weeping.
A little tear-letting lightened her unrevealable burden, and she rose, rejoicing that Clotilde had happened to be out of eye-and-ear-shot.

The scanty fire in the fireplace was ample to warm the room; the fire within her made it too insufferably hot! Rain or no rain, she parted the window-curtains and lifted the sash.

What a mark for Love's arrow she was, as, at the window, she stretched her two arms upward! And, "right so," who should chance to come cantering by, the big drops of rain pattering after him, but the knightliest man in that old town, and the fittest to perfect the fine old-fashioned poetry of the scene! "Clotilde," said Aurora, turning from her mirror, whither she had hastened to see if her face showed signs of tears (Clotilde was entering the room), "we shall never be turned out of this house by Honore Grandissime!" "Why ?" asked Clotilde, stopping short in the floor, forgetting Aurora's trust in Providence, and expecting to hear that M.Grandissime had been found dead in his bed.
"Because I saw him just now; he rode by on horseback.

A man with that noble face could never _do such a thing_!" The astonished Clotilde looked at her mother searchingly.

This sort of speech about a Grandissime?
But Aurora was the picture of innocence.
Clotilde uttered a derisive laugh.
"_Impertinente_!" exclaimed the other, laboring not to join in it.
"Ah-h-h!" cried Clotilde, in the same mood, "and what face had he when he wrote that letter ?" "What face ?" "Yes, what face ?" "I do not know what face you mean," said Aurora.
"What face," repeated Clotilde, "had Monsieur Honore de Grandissime on the day that he wrote--" "Ah, f-fah!" cried Aurora, and turned away, "you don't know what you are talking about! You make me wish sometimes that I were dead!" Clotilde had gone and shut down the sash, as it began to rain hard and blow.