The love of this rejected suitor, whose name was Trumeau, was
no more sincere than the notary's, nor were his motives more honourable.
Although his personal appearance was not such as to lead him to expect
that his path would be strewn with conquests, he considered that his
charms at least equalled those of his defunct relative; and it may be
said that in thus estimating them he did not lay himself--open to the
charge of overweening vanity. But however persistently he preened him
self before the widow, she vouchsafed him not one glance. Her heart was
filled with the love of his rival, and it is no easy thing to tear
a rooted passion out of a widow's heart when that widow's age is
forty-six, and she is silly enough to believe that the admiration she
feels is equalled by the admiration she inspires, as the unfortunate
Trumeau found to his cost. All his carefully prepared declarations
of love, all his skilful insinuations against Quennebert, brought
him nothing but scornful rebuffs. But Trumeau was nothing if not
persevering, and he could not habituate himself to the idea of seeing
the widow's fortune pass into other hands than his own, so that every
baffled move only increased his determination to spoil his competitor's
game. He was always on the watch for a chance to carry tales to the
widow, and so absorbed did he become in this fruitless pursuit, that he
grew yellower and more dried up from day to day, and to his jaundiced
eye the man who was at first simply his rival became his mortal enemy
and the object of his implacable hate, so that at length merely to get
the better of him, to outwit him, would, after so long-continued and
obstinate a struggle and so many defeats, have seemed to him too mild a
vengeance, too incomplete a victory.

Quennebert was well aware of the zeal with which the indefatigable
Trumeau sought to injure him. But he regarded the manoeuvres of his
rival with supreme unconcern, for he knew that he could at any time
sweep away the network of cunning machinations, underhand insinuations,
and malicious hints, which was spread around him, by allowing the widow
to confer on him the advantages she was so anxious to bestow. The goal,
he knew, was within his reach, but the problem he had to solve was how
to linger on the way thither, how to defer the triumphal moment, how to
keep hope alive in the fair one's breast and yet delay its fruition.
His affairs were in a bad way. Day by day full possession of the