vely faced the threefold torment which
this explanation inflicted on her; for she was wounded as a woman, as a
mother, and as a wife. In fact, so long as her son's father-in-law was
insolent and offensive, she had found the strength in her resistance
to the aggressive tradesman; but the sort of good-nature he showed,
in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and as a humiliated
National Guardsman, broke down her nerve, strung to the point of
snapping. She wrung her hands, melted into tears, and was in a state of
such helpless dejection, that she allowed Crevel to kneel at her feet,
kissing her hands.

"Good God! what will become of us!" she went on, wiping away her tears.
"Can a mother sit still and see her child pine away before her eyes?
What is to be the fate of that splendid creature, as strong in her pure
life under her mother's care as she is by every gift of nature? There
are days when she wanders round the garden, out of spirits without
knowing why; I find her with tears in her eyes----"

"She is one-and-twenty," said Crevel.

"Must I place her in a convent?" asked the Baroness. "But in such cases
religion is impotent to subdue nature, and the most piously trained
girls lose their head!--Get up, pray, monsieur; do you not understand
that everything is final between us? that I look upon you with horror?
that you have crushed a mother's last hopes----"

"But if I were to restore them," asked he.

Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a frenzied expression that really
touched him. But he drove pity back to the depths of his heart; she had
said, "I look upon you with horror."

Virtue is always a little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and
instincts by help of which we are able to tack when in a false position.

"So handsome a girl as Mademoiselle Hortense does not find a husband
nowadays if she is penniless," Crevel remarked, resuming his starchiest
manner. "Your daughter is one of those beauties who rather alarm
intending husbands; like a thoroughbred horse, which is too expensive
to keep up to find a ready purchaser. If you go out walking with such
a woman on your arm, every one will turn to look at you, and follow and
covet his neighbor's wife. Such success is a source of much uneasiness
to men who do not want to be killing lovers; for, after all, no man
kills more than one. In the position in which you find yourself there
are just three ways of getting your daughter married: Either by my
help--an