Elsie looked on and wondered, but did not jest with Jacqueline, as girls
are wont to jest with one another on such points as seemed involved in
this friendship between youth and youth, between man and woman.
Towards the conclusion of the girls' appointed labor in the vineyard, a
week passed in which Victor Le Roy had not once come out from Meaux in
the direction of the setting sun. He knew the time when the peasants'
labor in the vineyard would be done; Jacqueline had told him; and with
wonder, and with trouble, she lived through the days that brought no
word from him.
At work early and late, Jacqueline had no opportunity of discovering
what was going on in Meaux. But it chanced, on the last day of the last
week in the vineyard, tidings reached her: Martial Mazurier had been
arrested, and would be tried, the rumor said, as John Leclerc had been
tried; and sentence would be pronounced, doubtless, said conjecture,
severe in proportion to the influence the man had acquired, to the
position he held.
Hearing this, oppressed, troubled, yet not doubting, Jacqueline
determined that she would go to Meaux that evening, and so ascertain the
truth. She said nothing to Elsie of her purpose. She was careful in all
things to avoid that which might involve her companion in peril in an
unknown future; but at nightfall she had made herself ready to set
out for Meaux, when her purpose was changed in the first steps by the
appearing of Victor Le Roy.
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