Some time during the spring which followed the removal of Madame Mignon
and her daughter to the Chalet, Francisque Althor came to dine with
the Vilquins. Happening to see Modeste over the wall at the foot of the
lawn, he turned away his head. Six weeks later he married the eldest
Mademoiselle Vilquin. In this way Modeste, young, beautiful, and of high
birth, learned the lesson that for three whole months of her engagement
she had been nothing more than Mademoiselle Million. Her poverty, well
known to all, became a sentinel defending the approaches to the Chalet
fully as well as the prudence of the Latournelles or the vigilance of
Dumay. The talk of the town ran for a time on Mademoiselle Mignon's
position only to insult her.

"Poor girl! what will become of her?--an old maid, of course."

"What a fate! to have had the world at her feet; to have had the chance
to marry Francisque Althor,--and now, nobody willing to take her!"

"After a life of luxury, to come down to such poverty--"

And these insults were not uttered in secret or left to Modeste's
imagination; she heard them spoken more than once by the young men and
the young women of Havre as they walked to Ingouville, and, knowing that
Madame Mignon and her daughter lived at the Chalet, talked of them as
they passed the house. Friends of the Vilquins expressed surprise that
the mother and daughter were willing to live on among the scenes of
their former splendor. From her open window behind the closed blinds
Modeste sometimes heard such insolence as this:--

"I am sure I can't think how they can live there," some one would say
as he paced the villa lawn,--perhaps to assist Vilquin in getting rid of
his tenant.

"What do you suppose they live on? they haven't any means of earning
money."

"I am told the old woman has gone blind."

"Is Mademoiselle Mignon still pretty? Dear me, how dashing she used to
be! Well, she hasn't any horses now."

Most young girls on hearing these spiteful and silly speeches, born of
an envy that now rushed, peevish and drivelling, to avenge the past,
would have felt the blood mount to their foreheads; others would have
wept; some would have undergone spasms of anger; but Modeste smiled, as
we smile at the theatre while watching the actors. Her pride could not
descend so low as the level of such speeches.

The other event was more serious than these mercenary meannesses.
Bettina Caroline died in the arms of her younger sister, who h