Adrian Urmand had been three days gone from Granpere before Michel
Voss found a fitting opportunity for talking to his niece. It was
not a matter, as he thought, in which there was need for any great
hurry, but there was need for much consideration. Once again he
spoke on the subject to his wife.

'If she's thinking about George, she has kept it very much to
herself,' he remarked.

'Girls do keep it to themselves,' said Madame Voss.

'I'm not so sure of that. They generally show it somehow. Marie
never looks lovelorn. I don't believe a bit of it; and as for him,
all the time he has been away he has never so much as sent a word of
a message to one of us.'

'He sent his love to you, when I saw him, quite dutifully,' said
Madame Voss.

'Why don't he come and see us if he cares for us? It isn't of him
that Marie is thinking.'

'It isn't of anybody else then,' said Madame Voss. 'I never see her
speak a word to any of the young men, nor one of them ever speaking
a word to her.'

Pondering over all this, Michel Voss resolved that he would have it
all out with his niece on the following Sunday.