Do you
suppose," she cried, pointing to the fragments of glass, "that _my_
nerves could feel a crash like that, and I not come down to see what
had happened?"
She spoke so volubly, and kept so firm a grip of my arm, that I could
not get breath to utter a word of self-defence,--indeed, what defence
could I make? Yet I should say, from my mistress's singular manner,
that _she_ had seen that vision too, so wild were her eyes, so haggard
her face.
Little Jacques was buried. His attentive parents enjoyed a
carriage-ride, with his miniature coffin between them, quite as
well as if the little fellow had accompanied them alive and full of
mischief.
Outside matters, as Monsieur said, being now off his mind, he could
attend to business again.
The mirror belonged to "business." I had been writhing under that
knowledge all the morning of their absence.
Monsieur took the sight of his despoiled glass as calmly as Diogenes
might have viewed a similar disaster from his tub. Monsieur's
philosophy was grounded upon common sense. He knew that the frame
was valuable. He knew also that I had saved enough to pay for the
accident. I knew it, too, and was well aware that he would exact
payment to the uttermost farthing.
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