Marie Josephine shut the door behind her and came over and sat on the settle, well pleased to find that Jean was alone.
"It is soon time for me to be dressed for our supper, so I can only stay for a very little while. I have been thinking some more, Jean, and I am going to tell you what I have planned to do." She looked at him very earnestly as she spoke. "I think I shall tell you--if only I can be quite, quite sure that I can trust you. Now do not frown. You might forget and let a word slip. Will you promise me that you will never, never let any one know what I am going to tell you?" She put both hands on his shoulders as she spoke and her eyes shone with eagerness.
Jean nodded vigorously. He would not mention what he had done, not he. She had seen him pitch into Grigge, a big boy, who was known to be a fighter. She knew that he was not so young as she had thought. He could keep his own counsel too.
"I'll never tell, never, never, never," he assured her.
She went over to the door, opened it, and looked out to make sure that no one was coming. A shriek from above the door made her jump, but it was only Pince Nez the crow.
Marie Josephine walked over to the fire and poked one of the logs with her little bronze shoe. There was some snow on the shoe and it fell into the logs with a sizzling sound.
"It is like this, Jean," she said. "I've thought about it so many times, lying awake at night, and even when sitting with the others around the drawing-room fire after our supper, while Hortense and Le Pont worked over their tapestries and Cécile read aloud. Oh, Jean, I was only thirteen last week, but I feel older than any of them now. It makes me so sad when I see Le Pont doing the tapestry lilies on the screen that she has been working on for four years in the summers at Les Vignes, and remember how different it all was when she began it." Marie Josephine choked back a sob.
"Yes, but tell me what it is that you are thinking about," insisted Jean, as Pince Nez lighted suddenly on his shoulder and gave his ear a friendly little peck. "You are thinking of Madame your mother and of Monsieur Lisle, is it not so?" As he said this, he came over to the fire and stood beside her, frowning.