ther had come one day, and said, "I have
discovered a husband for you." She had accepted him blindly. Bruised
and wounded by daily outrages, she had sought refuge in marriage as
in a haven of safety.

And since, hardly a day had elapsed that she had not thought it
would have been better for her to have died rather then to have
riveted to her neck those fetters that death alone can remove. She
thought, therefore, that her daughter was perfectly right. And yet
twenty years of slavery had so weakened the springs of her energy,
that under the glance of Costeclar, threatening her with her
husband's name, she felt embarrassed, and could scarcely stammer
some timid excuses. And she allowed him to prolong his visit, and
consequently her torment, for over an half an hour; then, when he
had gone,

"He and your father understand each other," said she to her daughter,
"that is but too evident. What is the use of struggling?"

A fugitive blush colored the pale cheeks of Mlle. Gilberte. For
the past forty-eight hours she had been exhausting herself, seeking
an issue to an impossible situation; and she had accustomed her mind
to the worst eventualities.

"Do you wish me, then, to desert the paternal roof?" she exclaimed.

Mme. Favoral almost dropped on the floor.

"You would run away," she stammered, "you!"

"Rather than become that man's wife, yes!"

"And where would you go, unfortunate child? what would you do?"

"I can earn my living."

Mme. Favoral shook her head sadly. The same suspicions were reviving
within her that she had felt once before.

"Gilberte," she said in a beseeching tone, "am I, then, no longer
your best friend? and will you not tell me from what sources you
draw your courage and your resolution?"

And, as her daughter said nothing:

"God alone knows what may happen!" sighed the poor woman.

Nothing happened, but what could have been easily foreseen. When
M. Favoral came home to dinner, he was whistling a perfect storm
on the stairs. He abstained at first from all recrimination; but
towards the end of the meal, with the most sarcastic look he could
assume:

"It seems," he said to his daughter, "that you were unwell this
afternoon?"

Bravely, and without flinching, she sustained his look; and, in a
firm voice:

"I shall always be indisposed," she replied, "when M. Costeclar
calls. You hear me, don't you, father--always!"

But the cashier of the Credit Mutual was not one of those