d set her heart upon unravelling.

She was now more preoccupied than ever about the relations which she
suspected to exist between M. de Camors and Madame de Campvallon. These
relations could not but prove fatal to the hopes she had so long founded
on the widowhood of the Marquise and the heritage of the General. The
marriage of M. de Camors had for the moment deceived her, but she was
one of those pious persons who always think evil, and whose suspicions
are soon reawakened. She tried to obtain from Vautrot, who had so long
been intimate with her nephew, some explanation of the mystery; but as
Vautrot was too prudent to enlighten her, she turned him out of doors.

After his encounter with M. de Camors, he immediately turned his steps
toward the Rue St. Dominique, and an hour later Madame de la Roche-Jugan
had the pleasure of knowing all that he knew of the liaison between the
Count and the Marquise. But we remember that he knew everything. These
revelations, though not unexpected, terrified Madame de la Roche-Jugan,
who saw her maternal projects destroyed forever. To her bitter feeling
at this deception was immediately joined, in this base soul, a sudden
thirst for revenge. It was true she had been badly recompensed for her
anonymous letter, by which she had previously attempted to open the
eyes of the unfortunate General; for from that moment the General, the
Marquise, and M. de Camors himself, without an open rupture, let her
feel their marks of contempt, which embittered her heart. She never
would again expose herself to a similar slight of this kind; but she
must assuredly, in the cause of good morals, at once confront the blind
with the culpable, and this time with such proofs as would make the
blow irresistible. By the mere thought, Madame de la Roche-Jugan had
persuaded herself that the new turn events were taking might become
favorable to the expectations which had become the fixed idea of her
life.

Madame de Campvallon destroyed, M. de Camors set aside, the General
would be alone in the world; and it was natural to suppose he would turn
to his young relative Sigismund, if only to recognize the far-sighted
affection and wounded heart of Madame de la Roche-Jugan.

The General, in fact, had by his marriage contract settled all his
property on his wife; but Madame de la Roche-Jugan, who had consulted
a lawyer on this question, knew that he had the power of alienating his
fortune during life, and of stripping h