which fought its way up into the beams of her eyes and asserted
itself in the frequency and heartiness of her laugh despite her sincere
participation in her companion's distresses and a fearful looking
forward to to-morrow.

Why these flashes of gladness? If we do not know, it is because we have
overlooked one of her sources of trouble. From the night of the _bal
masque_ she had--we dare say no more than that she had been haunted; she
certainly would not at first have admitted even so much to herself. Yet
the fact was not thereby altered, and first the fact and later the
feeling had given her much distress of mind. Who he was whose image
would not down, for a long time she did not know. This, alone, was
torture; not merely because it was mystery, but because it helped to
force upon her consciousness that her affections, spite of her, were
ready and waiting for him and he did not come after them. That he loved
her, she knew; she had achieved at the ball an overwhelming victory, to
her certain knowledge, or, depend upon it, she never would have
unmasked--never.

But with this torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of loving, but
the fear of her daughter. This is a world that allows nothing without
its obverse and reverse. Strange differences are often seen between the
two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world
of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds
herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom,
and on the other, Stepfather.

Then, all this torture to be hidden under smiles! Worse still, when by
and by Messieurs Agoussou, Assonquer, Danny and others had been appealed
to and a Providence boundless in tender compassion had answered in their
stead, she and her lover had simultaneously discovered each other's
identity only to find that he was a Montague to her Capulet. And the
source of her agony must be hidden, and falsely attributed to the rent
deficiency and their unprotected lives. Its true nature must be
concealed even from Clotilde. What a secret--for what a spirit--to keep
from what a companion!--a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might
be, gall to Clotilde. She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all
alone--alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the lions
and tigers. She wished she had told the secret when it was small and had
let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde's knowledge day by
day. At first