White Lies. Charles Reade Reade

le veux,” was the cold reply.

      These were words the baroness uttered so seldom that they were little likely to be disputed.

      The doctor carved and helped the young ladies and himself.

      When they had all eaten a little, a discussion was observed to be going on between Rose and her sister. At last Aubertin caught these words, “It will be in vain; even you have not influence enough for that, Rose.”

      “We shall see,” was the reply, and Rose put the wing of a partridge on a plate and rose calmly from her chair. She took the plate and put it on a little work-table by her mother’s side. The others pretended to be all mouths, but they were all ears. The baroness looked in Rose’s face with an air of wonder that was not very encouraging. Then, as Rose said nothing, she raised her aristocratic hand with a courteous but decided gesture of refusal.

      Undaunted Rose laid her palm softly on the baroness’s shoulder, and said to her as firmly as the baroness herself had just spoken—

      “Il le veut.”

      The baroness was staggered. Then she looked with moist eyes at the fair young face, then she reflected. At last she said, with an exquisite mixture of politeness and affection, “It is his daughter who has told me ‘Il le veut.’ I obey.”

      Rose returning like a victorious knight from the lists, saucily exultant, and with only one wet eyelash, was solemnly kissed and petted by Josephine and the doctor.

      Thus they loved one another in this great, old, falling house. Their familiarity had no coarse side; a form, not of custom but affection, it went hand-in-hand with courtesy by day and night.

      The love of the daughters for their mother had all the tenderness, subtlety, and unselfishness of womanly natures, together with a certain characteristic of the female character. And whither that one defect led them, and by what gradations, it may be worth the reader’s while to observe.

      The baroness retired to rest early; and she was no sooner gone than Josephine leaned over to Rose, and told her what their mother had said to the oak-tree. Rose heard this with anxiety; hitherto they had carefully concealed from their mother that the government claimed the right of selling the chateau to pay the creditors, etc.; and now both sisters feared the old lady had discovered it somehow, or why that strange thing she had said to the oak-tree? But Dr. Aubertin caught their remarks, and laid down his immortal MS. on French insects, to express his hope that they were putting a forced interpretation on the baroness’s words.

      “I think,” said he, “she merely meant how short-lived are we all compared with this ancient oak. I should be very sorry to adopt the other interpretation; for if she knows she can at any moment be expelled from Beaurepaire, it will be almost as bad for her as the calamity itself; THAT, I think, would kill her.”

      “Why so?” said Rose, eagerly. “What is this house or that? Mamma will still have her daughters’ love, go where she will.”

      Aubertin replied, “It is idle to deceive ourselves; at her age men and women hang to life by their habits; take her away from her chateau, from the little oratory where she prays every day for the departed, from her place in the sun on the south terrace, and from all the memories that surround her here; she would soon pine, and die.”

      Here the savant seeing a hobby-horse near, caught him and jumped on. He launched into a treatise upon the vitality of human beings, and proved that it is the mind which keeps the body of a man alive for so great a length of time as fourscore years; for that he had in the earlier part of his studies carefully dissected a multitude of animals—frogs, rabbits, dogs, men, horses, sheep, squirrels, foxes, cats, etc.—and discovered no peculiarity in man’s organs to account for his singular longevity, except in the brain or organ of mind. Thence he went to the longevity of men with contented minds, and the rapid decay of the careworn. Finally he succeeded in convincing them the baroness was so constituted, physically and mentally, that she would never move from Beaurepaire except into her grave. However, having thus terrified them, he proceeded to console them. “You have a friend,” said he, “a powerful friend; and here in my pocket—somewhere—is a letter that proves it.”

      The letter was from Mr. Perrin the notary. It appeared by it that Dr. Aubertin had reminded the said Perrin of his obligations to the late baron, and entreated him to use all his influence to keep the estate in this ancient family.

      Perrin had replied at first in a few civil lines; but his present letter was a long and friendly one. It made both the daughters of Beaurepaire shudder at the peril they had so narrowly escaped. For by it they now learned for the first time that one Jaques Bonard, a small farmer, to whom they owed but five thousand francs, had gone to the mayor and insisted, as he had a perfect right, on the estate being put up to public auction. This had come to Perrin’s ears just in time, and he had instantly bought Bonard’s debt, and stopped the auction; not, however, before the very bills were printed; for which he, Perrin, had paid, and now forwarded the receipt. He concluded by saying that the government agent was personally inert, and would never move a step in the matter unless driven by a creditor.

      “But we have so many,” said Rose in dismay. “We are not safe a day.”

      Aubertin assured her the danger was only in appearance. “Your large creditors are men of property, and such men let their funds lie unless compelled to move them. The small mortgagee, the petty miser, who has, perhaps, no investment to watch but one small loan, about which he is as anxious and as noisy as a hen with one chicken, he is the clamorous creditor, the harsh little egoist, who for fear of risking a crown piece would bring the Garden of Eden to the hammer. Now we are rid of that little wretch, Bonard, and have Perrin on our side; so there is literally nothing to fear.”

      The sisters thanked him warmly, and Rose shared his hopes; and said so; but Josephine was silent and thoughtful. Nothing more worth recording passed that night. But the next day was the first of May, Josephine’s birthday.

      Now they always celebrated this day as well as they could; and used to plant a tree, for one thing. Dard, well spurred by Jacintha, had got a little acacia; and they were all out in the Pleasaunce to plant it. Unhappily, they were a preposterous time making up their feminine minds where to have it set; so Dard turned rusty and said the park was the best place for it. There it could do no harm, stick it where you would.

      “And who told you to put in your word?” inquired Jacintha. “You’re here to dig the hole where mademoiselle chooses; not to argufy.”

      Josephine whispered Rose, “I admire the energy of her character. Could she be induced to order once for all where the poor thing is to be planted?”

      “Then where WILL you have it, mademoiselle?” asked Dard, sulkily.

      “Here, I think, Dard,” said Josephine sweetly.

      Dard grinned malignantly, and drove in his spade. “It will never be much bigger than a stinging nettle,” thought he, “for the roots of the oak have sucked every atom of heart out of this.” His black soul exulted secretly.

      Jacintha stood by Dard, inspecting his work; the sisters intertwined, a few feet from him. The baroness turned aside, and went to look for a moment at the chaplet she had placed yesterday on the oak-tree bough. Presently she uttered a slight ejaculation; and her daughters looked up directly.

      “Come here, children,” said she. They glided to her in a moment; and found her eyes fixed upon an object that lay on the knights’ bough.

      It was a sparkling purse.

      I dare say you have noticed that the bark on the boughs of these very ancient trees is as deeply furrowed as the very stem of an oak tree that boasts but a few centuries; and in one of these deep furrows lay a green silk purse with gold coins glittering through the glossy meshes.

      Josephine and Rose eyed it a moment like startled deer; then Rose pounced on it. “Oh, how heavy!” she cried. This brought up Dard and Jacintha, in time to see Rose pour ten shining gold pieces out of the purse into her pink-white palm, while her