and plotting for her their names had represented nothing in
her mind except unseen, unknown relatives to whom she was indebted for
support, but to whom she also owed what she hated and rebelled
against,--her imprisonment in the convent. Why should she love them?
Blood tells, however; and when Victorine found herself free, and face to
face with the grandfather of whom she had so long heard and only once
seen, and the Aunt Jeanne who had been described to her as the loving
benefactress of her youth, she had a new and affectionate sentiment
towards them. But she would at any minute have calmly sacrificed them
both for the furtherance of her own interests; and the thoughts she was
thinking while Willan Blaycke gazed at her so ardently this night were
precisely as follows:--

"If I could only have a good chance at him, I could make him marry me. I
see it in his face. I suppose I'd never see Aunt Jeanne again, or
grandfather; but what of that? I'd play my cards better than Aunt Jeanne
did, I know that much. Let me once get to be mistress of that stone
house--" And the color grew deeper and deeper on Victorine's cheeks in
the excitement of these reflections.

"Poor girl!" Willan Blaycke was thinking. "I must not gaze at her so
constantly. The color in her cheeks betrays that I distress her." And
the honest gentleman tried his best to look away and bear good part in
conversation with his friend. It was a doubly good stroke on the part of
the wily Victorine to take her place behind the elder man's chair. It
looked like a proper and modest preference on her part for age; and it
kept her out of the old man's sight, and in the direct range of Willan's
eyes as he conversed with his friend. When she had occasion to hand
anything to Willan she did so with an apparent shyness which was
captivating; and the tone of voice in which she spoke to him was low and
timid.

Old Victor could hardly contain himself. He went back and forth between
the dining-room and kitchen far oftener than was necessary, that he
might have the pleasure of saying to Jeanne: "It works! it works! He
doth gaze the eyes out of his head at her. The girl could not do better.
She hath affected the very thing which will snare him the quickest."

"Oh no, father! Thou mistakest Victorine. She hath no plan of snaring
him; it was with much ado I got her to consent to serve him at all. It
was but for my sake she did it."

Victor stared at Jeanne when she said this. "Tho