La Couteau was standing there with a sturdy young person of
five-and-twenty, who carried a superb-looking infant in her arms. She had
dark hair, a low forehead, and a broad face, and was very respectably
dressed. And she made a little courtesy like a well-trained nurse, who
has already served with gentlefolks and knows how to behave. But
Valentine's embarrassment remained extreme; she looked at the nurse and
at the babe like an ignorant woman who, though her elder children had
been brought up in a room adjoining her own, had never troubled or
concerned herself about anything. In her despair, seeing that Santerre
kept to himself, she again appealed to Mathieu, who once more excused
himself. And it was only then that La Couteau, after glancing askance at
the gentleman who, somehow or other, always turned up whenever she had
business to transact, ventured to intervene:
"Will madame rely on me? If madame will kindly remember, I once before
ventured to offer her my services, and if she had accepted them she would
have saved herself no end of worry. That Marie Lebleu is impossible, and
I certainly could have warned madame of it at the time when I came to
fetch Marie's child.
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