say, money--lets him
loose; and then seems surprised because the boy is guilty of acts of
folly. It would be a miracle if he were not. So take courage, and hope
for the best, my dear Lia."

She shook her head despondingly. "Do you suppose that my heart hasn't
pleaded for him?" she said. "I am his mother; I can never cease to love
him, whatever he may do. Even now I am ready to give a drop of blood for
each tear I can save him. But I am not blind; I have read his nature.
Wilkie has no heart."

"Ah! my dear friend, how do you know what shameful advice he may have
received before coming to you?"

Madame d'Argeles half rose, and said, in an agitated voice: "What! you
try to make me believe that? 'Advice!' Then he must have found a man
who said to him: 'Go to the house of this unfortunate woman who gave you
birth, and order her to publish her dishonor and yours. If she refuses,
insult and beat her! 'You know, even better than I, baron, that this
is impossible. In the vilest natures, and when every other honorable
feeling has been lost, love for one's mother survives. Even convicts
deprive themselves of their wine, and sell their rations, in order to
send a trifle now and then to their mothers--while he----"

She paused, not because she shrunk from what she was about to say, but
because she was exhausted and out of breath. She rested for a moment,
and then resumed in a calmer tone: "Besides, the person who sent him
here had counselled coolness and prudence. I discovered this at once.
It was only toward the close of the interview, and after an unexpected
revelation from me, that he lost all control over himself. The thought
that he would lose my brother's millions crazed him. Oh! that fatal and
accursed money! Wilkie's adviser wished him to employ legal means to
obtain an acknowledgment of his parentage; and he had copied from the
Code a clause which is applicable to this case. By this one circumstance
I am convinced that his adviser is a man of experience in such
matters--in other words, the business agent----"

"What business agent?" inquired the baron.

"The person who called here the other day, M. Isidore Fortunat. Ah! why
didn't I not bribe him to hold his peace?"

The baron had entirely forgotten the existence of Victor Chupin's
honorable employer. "You are mistaken, Lia," he replied. "M. Fortunat
has had no hand in this."

"Then who could have betrayed my secret?"

"Why, your former ally, the rascal for whose