We must close this pit."

"If only Madame Marneffe would throw him over!" said Hortense bitterly.

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Victorin. "He would take up some one else;
and with her, at any rate, the worst outlay is over."

What a change in children formerly so respectful, and kept so long by
their mother in blind worship of their father! They knew him now for
what he was.

"But for me," said Lisbeth, "your father's ruin would be more complete
than it is."

"Come in to mamma," said Hortense; "she is very sharp, and will suspect
something; as our kind Lisbeth says, let us keep everything from
her--let us be cheerful."

"Victorin," said Lisbeth, "you have no notion of what your father
will be brought to by his passion for women. Try to secure some future
resource by getting the Marshal to marry me. Say something about it this
evening; I will leave early on purpose."

Victorin went into the bedroom.

"And you, poor little thing!" said Lisbeth in an undertone to Hortense,
"what can you do?"

"Come to dinner with us to-morrow, and we will talk it over," answered
Hortense. "I do not know which way to turn; you know how hard life is,
and you will advise me."

While the whole family with one consent tried to persuade the Marshal to
marry, and while Lisbeth was making her way home to the Rue Vanneau, one
of those incidents occurred which, in such women as Madame Marneffe, are
a stimulus to vice by compelling them to exert their energy and
every resource of depravity. One fact, at any rate, must however be
acknowledged: life in Paris is too full for vicious persons to do wrong
instinctively and unprovoked; vice is only a weapon of defence against
aggressors--that is all.

Madame Marneffe's drawing-room was full of her faithful admirers, and
she had just started the whist-tables, when the footman, a pensioned
soldier recruited by the Baron, announced:

"Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."

Valerie's heart jumped, but she hurried to the door, exclaiming:

"My cousin!" and as she met the Brazilian, she whispered:

"You are my relation--or all is at an end between us!--And so you were
not wrecked, Henri?" she went on audibly, as she led him to the fire. "I
heard you were lost, and have mourned for you these three years."

"How are you, my good fellow?" said Marneffe, offering his hand to the
stranger, whose get-up was indeed that of a Brazilian and a millionaire.

Monsieur le Baron Henri Montes de Montej