Green Girls

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Profound silence pervaded the house of Mirzan at Chartres and nothing betrayed the discovery of the sad adventure which had happened within its walls. No sound of voices revealed the explosion of anger which emanated from Mr. Francis Mirzan when, called by his wife, he surprised his two children, Paul and Adeline, in the very act of libertinism.

Then came a severe flogging on the backs of the two criminals who were afterward shut up in their respective rooms, a torrent of words among which some epithets like scamp, culprits, wicked children destined to dishonour their parents and so forth; then the calm, the mothers tears, the fathers reflections, the decision to send them as boarders, one to a college and the other to a convent.

Mr. Francis Mirzan, a magistrate of the old school, was austerity itself and Mrs. Isabella Mirzan was of the most devout principles.

Paul Mirzan was thirteen years of age and received the personal correction with rage and fury; Adeline, a girl of fourteen, the more guilty of the two in the affair, received it with icy and haughty impassibility.

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