"Nothing? do you stay there any length of time?"
"And have you been in the habit of making that your resort?" she inquired quickly.
"It is astonishing that I should not have seen you before," she said, lying so boldly that Pitou was almost convinced.
But he was ashamed for her sake; he was timid from being in love and this led him to be guarded.
"I may have dozed off," he replied; "it has happened when I have taxed my brain too much."
"Then in your sleep you would not have noticed where I strayed for shade--I would go as far as the walls of the old shooting-lodge."
"The Charny Hunting-lodge," replied she, blushing from his innocence being too thickly laid on not to be suspicious. "It is there grow the finest houseleeks in the section. I burnt myself while ironing and wanted to make a poultice of them."
As if willing to believe her, he looked at her hands.
"No, not my hand, my foot," she said quickly. "I--I dropped the iron: but it has done me good; you see, that I do not limp."
"She did not limp either when she scampered through the wood like a fawn," thought Ange.
She imagined she had succeeded and that Pitou had seen and heard nothing. Giving way to delight, mean in so fine a spirit, she said:
"So Captain Pitou is riding his high horse; proud of his new rank, he scorns us rustics from being a military officer."
Pitou felt wounded. Even a dissimulated sacrifice almost requires some reward, and as Catherine only mystified Pitou or jested at him, no doubt contrasting him with the intelligent Charny, all his good intentions vanished. Self-esteem is a charmed serpent, on which it is perillous to step unless you crush it once for all.
"It seems to me that you are the haughty one," he returned, "for you drove me off the farm on the grounds that there was no work for me. I haven't told Master Billet so far I have arms for earning my bread, thank God! However, you are the mistress under your own roof. In short, you sent me away. Hence, as you saw me at the Charny Lodge, and we were not enemies, it was your place to speak to me instead of running away like a boy stealing apples."
The viper had bitten; Catherine dropped out of her calm.
"As though fire had broken out on the farm. I had not time to shut up my book before you were on the back of Younker, where he was concealed in the foliage, after barking an ashtree, and ruining it."