e Comte d'Esgrignon's
arrest on a charge of forgery. The Comte d'Esgrignon would be tried in
the Assize Court; he would be condemned and branded. Most of those who
cared for the honor of the family denied the fact. At nightfall Chesnel
went to Mme. Camusot and escorted the stranger to the Hotel d'Esgrignon.
Poor Mlle. Armande was expecting him; she led the fair Duchess to her
own room, which she had given up to her, for his lordship the Bishop
occupied Victurnien's chamber; and, left alone with her guest, the noble
woman glanced at the Duchess with most piteous eyes.

"You owed help, indeed, madame, to the poor boy who ruined himself for
your sake," she said, "the boy to whom we are all of us sacrificing
ourselves."

The Duchess had already made a woman's survey of Mlle. d'Esgrignon's
room; the cold, bare, comfortless chamber, that might have been a nun's
cell, was like a picture of the life of the heroic woman before her. The
Duchess saw it all--past, present, and future--with rising emotion, felt
the incongruity of her presence, and could not keep back the falling
tears that made answer for her.

But in Mlle. Armande the Christian overcame Victurnien's aunt. "Ah, I
was wrong; forgive me, Mme. la Duchesse; you did not know how poor we
were, and my nephew was incapable of the admission. And besides, now
that I see you, I can understand all--even the crime!"

And Mlle. Armande, withered and thin and white, but beautiful as those
tall austere slender figures which German art alone can paint, had tears
too in her eyes.

"Do not fear, dear angel," the Duchess said at last; "he is safe."

"Yes, but honor?--and his career? Chesnel told me; the King knows the
truth."

"We will think of a way of repairing the evil," said the Duchess.

Mlle. Armande went downstairs to the salon, and found the Collection of
Antiquities complete to a man. Every one of them had come, partly to
do honor to the Bishop, partly to rally round the Marquis; but Chesnel,
posted in the antechamber, warned each new arrival to say no word of
the affair, that the aged Marquis might never know that such a thing
had been. The loyal Frank was quite capable of killing his son or du
Croisier; for either the one or the other must have been guilty of
death in his eyes. It chanced, strangely enough, that he talked more of
Victurnien than usual; he was glad that his son had gone back to Paris.
The King would give Victurnien a place before very long; the King