allowed themselves to play for ten sous points.

"Well, my little darling," said the father to the daughter in the
embrasure of a window. "Admit that papa thinks of everything. If you
send your orders this evening to your former dressmaker in Paris, and
all your other furnishing people, you shall show yourself eight days
hence in all the splendor of an heiress. Meantime we will install
ourselves in the villa. You already have a pretty horse, now order a
habit; you owe that amount of civility to the grand equerry."

"All the more because there will be a number of us to ride," said
Modeste, who was recovering the colors of health.

"The secretary did not say much," remarked Madame Mignon.

"A little fool," said Madame Latournelle; "the poet has an attentive
word for everybody. He thanked Monsieur Latournelle for his help in
choosing the house; and said he must have taken counsel with a woman of
good taste. But the other looked as gloomy as a Spaniard, and kept his
eyes fixed on Modeste as though he would like to swallow her whole. If
he had even looked at me I should have been afraid of him."

"He had a pleasant voice," said Madame Mignon.

"No doubt he came to Havre to inquire about the Mignons in the interests
of his friend the poet," said Modeste, looking furtively at her father.
"It was certainly he whom we saw in church."

Madame Dumay and Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, accepted this as the
natural explanation of Ernest's journey.

CHAPTER XIX. OF WHICH THE AUTHOR THINKS A GOOD DEAL

"Do you know, Ernest," cried Canalis, when they had driven a short
distance from the house, "I don't see any marriageable woman in society
in Paris who compares with that adorable girl."

"Ah, that ends it!" replied Ernest. "She loves you, or she will love you
if you desire it. Your fame won half the battle. Well, you may now
have it all your own way. You shall go there alone in future. Modeste
despises me; she is right to do so; and I don't see any reason why I
should condemn myself to see, to love, desire, and adore that which I
can never possess."

After a few consoling remarks, dashed with his own satisfaction at
having made a new version of Caesar's phrase, Canalis divulged a desire
to break with the Duchesse de Chaulieu. La Briere, totally unable to
keep up the conversation, made the beauty of the night an excuse to be
set down, and then rushed like one possessed to the seashore, where he
stayed till past ten, i