son, Antoine, who had just left his regiment, would do the heavy work and attend to the garden.
***
And life began, the hard, cruel, despairing life of those who have no one to love them and no one whom they can love.
There was no consolation for Gilberte, after her mother's death. What saved her was the necessity to act, to act continually, to make decisions, to give orders, in short, to exercise her will. She had to shake off her natural inclination for dreaming and listlessness, to break herself of the passive habits due to the existence which she had led till then. Things went so badly at the manor-house until she realized the task that lay before her, the domestic duties were so irregularly performed, there was so much fuss and disorder, that she was compelled to look after her own housekeeping.
She found it difficult indeed to word the first reprimand:
