Jeanne followed the priest’s artful device, and, a fortnight later, told Julien she thought she was enceinte. He started up.
“It isn’t possible! You can’t be!”
She gave him her reasons for thinking so.
“Bah!” he answered. “You wait a little while.”
Every morning he asked, “Well?” but she always replied: “No, not yet; I am very much mistaken if I am not enceinte.”
He also began to think so, and his surprise was only equaled by his annoyance.
“Well, I can’t understand it,” was all he could say. “I’ll be hanged if I know how it can have happened.”
At the end of a month she began to tell people the news, but she said nothing about it to the Comtesse Gilberte, for she felt an old feeling of delicacy in mentioning it to her. At the very first suspicion of his wife’s pregnancy, Julien had
