and repulsion that he had felt with
regard to her. Generally timid and confused, the work-girl could not
withdraw her eyes from Rodin's; her heart beat violently, as at the
coming of some great danger, and, as the excellent creature feared only
for those she loved, she approached Adrienne involuntarily, keeping
her eyes fixed on Rodin. The Jesuit was too good a physiognomist not to
perceive the formidable impression he had made, and he felt an increase
of his instinctive aversion for the sempstress. Instead of casting down
his eyes, he appeared to examine her with such sustained attention, that
Mdlle. de Cardoville was astonished at it.

"I beg your pardon, my dear girl," said Rodin, as if recalling his
recollections, and addressing himself to Mother Bunch, "I beg your
pardon--but I think--if I am not deceived--did you not go a few days
since to St. Mary's Convent, hard by?"

"Yes, sir."

"No doubt, it was you. Where then was my head?" cried Rodin. "It was
you--I should have guessed it sooner."

"Of what do you speak, sir?" asked Adrienne.

"Oh! you are right, my dear young lady," said Rodin, pointing to the
hunchback. "She has indeed a noble heart, such as we seek. If you knew
with what dignity, with what courage this poor girl, who was out of work
and, for her, to want work is to want everything--if you knew, I say,
with what dignity she rejected the shameful wages that the superior of
the convent was unprincipled enough to offer, on condition of her acting
as a spy in a family where it was proposed to place her."

"Oh, that is infamous!" cried Mdlle. de Cardoville, with disgust. "Such
a proposal to this poor girl--to her!"

"Madame," said Mother Bunch, bitterly, "I had no work, I was poor, they
did not know me--and they thought they might propose anything to the
likes of me."

"And I tell you," said Rodin, "that it was a double baseness on the part
of the superior, to offer such temptation to misery, and it was doubly
noble in you to refuse."

"Sir," said the sewing-girl, with modest embarrassment.

"Oh! I am not to be intimidated," resumed Rod in. "Praise or blame, I
speak out roughly what I think. Ask this dear young lady," he added,
with a glance at Adrienne. "I tell you plainly, that I think as well of
you as she does herself."

"Believe me, dear," said Adrienne, "there are some sorts of praise which
honor, recompense, and encourage; and M. Rodin's is of the number. I
know it,--yes, I know it."