room to see that it was properly cared for; she quarreled in a stifled, incoherent fashion with Augustine and the other servants; she fussed about the garden, insensible to its beauty, and interested only in its order. She even undertook after a time to do the marketing herself when she discovered with horror that the shopkeepers paid old Mélanie the housekeeper a commission on what she purchased.
So Lily, for a third time, turned over the possession of her house to another. Madame Gigon had once treated it as her own and after her César and Ellen had quarreled over it. And now, willingly, she delivered it into the keeping of Hattie who had greater need of it than any of the others. She told the servants that they must not mind Madame Tolliver's eccentric behavior and she made up to old Mélanie the amount of her commissions. But even if she had not done these things, they would not have left her, for Lily understood servants and had a way with them. Old Mélanie had been with her for more than twenty years, since Lily had come to Madame Gigon, a little frightened but resolved, none the less, never to marry Jean's father.
SABINE, in her defeat, did not complain. In all the business of the divorce, she conducted herself as she had always done, with an amazing control; so that no one, not even Thérèse, was able to discover whether she was willing or not to release the pretense of a possession she had held over Callendar for so many years. They talked it over quite calmly, arranging all the details in the most business-like and efficient fashion, under the guidance of that short, frumpy, powerful old woman, Thérèse, who appeared to know the law as thoroughly as she knew the world of banking. There was no word spoken in anger or in
