nd felt more than a little guilty in that quarter; he had not
written to him, having nothing satisfactory to tell him. He could
see the young man waiting in vain, at the Hotel Steinbock. To pass
a fortnight at Chur is a torture that the most robust constitution
scarcely can endure, and it is an increased torture to watch every
evening and every morning for a letter that never comes. M. Moriaz
resolved to open hostilities, to begin a new assault on the impregnable
place. He was seeking in his mind for a beginning for his first phrase.
He had just found it, when suddenly Antoinette said to him, in a low,
agitated, but distinct voice: "I have a question for you. What would you
think if I should some day marry M. Abel Larinski?"

M. Moriaz started up, and his cane, slipping from his hand, rolled to
the bottom of the declivity. He looked at his daughter, and said to
her: "I beg of you to repeat what you just said to me. I fear I have
misunderstood you."

She answered in a firmer voice, "I am curious to know what you would
think if I should marry, some day or other, Count Larinski."

He was startled, thunderstruck. He never had foreseen that such a
catastrophe could occur, nor had the least suspicion that anything had
passed between his daughter and M. Larinski. Of all the ideas that had
suggested themselves to him, this seemed the least admissible, the most
improbable and ridiculous. After a long silence, he said to Antoinette,
"You want to frighten me--this is not serious."

"Do you dislike M. Larinski?" she asked.

"Certainly not; I by no means dislike him. He has good manners, he
speaks well, and I must acknowledge that he had a very graceful way of
taking me from off my rock, where I should still be had it not been
for him. I am grateful to him for it; but, from that to giving him my
daughter, there is a wide margin. If he wanted me to give him a medal he
should have it."

"Let us talk seriously," said she. "What objections have you to make?"

"First, M. Larinski is a stranger, and I mistrust strangers. Then,
I know him but slightly. I naturally demand additional information.
Finally, I own that the state of his affairs--"

"Ah! that is the main point," she interrupted. "He is poor; that is his
crime, which he has not disguised. How differently we think! I have some
fortune; its only advantage that I can see is that it makes me free to
marry the man I esteem, though he be poor."

"And perhaps a little because o