earn her daughter's secret,
and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. For
a moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other to
speak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. Suddenly
Germinie rushed from her chair into the stout woman's arms.

"If you knew, Madame Jupillon!"

She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. "Oh! you won't be
angry with me! Well! yes, I love him--I've had a child by him. It's
true, I love him. Three years ago----"

At every word Madame Jupillon's face became sterner and more icy. She
coldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with an
accent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a person
who is suffocating: "Oh! my God--you!--tell me such things as
that!--me!--his mother!--to my face! My God, must it be? My son--a
child--an innocent child! You've had the face to ruin him for me! And
now you tell me that you did it! No, it ain't possible, my God! And I
had such confidence. There's nothing worth living for. There's no
trusting anybody in this world! All the same, mademoiselle, I wouldn't
ever 'a' believed it of you. _Dame!_ such things give me a turn. Ah!
this upsets me completely. I know myself, and I'm quite likely to be
sick after this----"

"Madame Jupillon! Madame Jupillon!" Germinie murmured in an imploring
tone, half dead with shame and grief on the chair on which she had
fallen. "I beg you to forgive me. It was stronger than I was. And then I
thought--I believed----"

"You believed! Oh! my God; you believed! What did you believe? That
you'd be my son's wife, eh? Ah! Lord God! is it possible, my poor
child?"

And adopting a more and more plaintive and lamentable tone as the words
she hurled at Germinie cut deeper and deeper, Mere Jupillon continued:
"But, my poor girl, you must have a reason, let's hear it. What did I
always tell you? That it would be all right if you'd been born ten years
earlier. Let's see, your date was 1820, you told me, and now it's '49.
You're getting on toward thirty, you see, my dear child. I say! it makes
me feel bad to say that to you--I'd so much rather not hurt you. But a
body only has to look at you, my poor young lady. What can I do? It's
your age--your hair--I can lay my finger in the place where you part
it."

"But," said Germinie, in whose heart black wrath was beginning to
rumble, "what about what your son owes me? My money? The money I took
out of the