pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the first
time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept.

"What are you crying about? You didn't know your uncle," said her
father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless threw
upon his piles of gold.

"But, monsieur," said Nanon, "who wouldn't feel pity for the poor young
man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what's coming?"

"I didn't speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!"

Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able to
hide her feelings. She did not answer.

"You will say nothing to him about it, Ma'ame Grandet, till I return,"
said the old man. "I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge
along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second
breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As
for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying,
that's enough, child. He's going off like a shot to the Indies. You will
never see him again."

The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with
his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of both
hands together, and went out.

"Mamma, I am suffocating!" cried Eugenie when she was alone with her
mother; "I have never suffered like this."

Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let
her breathe fresh air.

"I feel better!" said Eugenie after a moment.

This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm
and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with the
sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the objects of
their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the Hungarian
sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely have been
more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,--always together
in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the same
atmosphere.

"My poor child!" said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie's head and laying
it upon her bosom.

At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother by
a look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought.

"Why send him to the Indies?" she said. "If he is unhappy, ought he not
to stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?"

"Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we
must respect them."

The mother and daughter sat down in silence,