make
_your_ dresses for three years? Have you not been one of her customers?
An unprofitable customer? The _profit_ was the only difference between
what she did at the _Chateau de Gramont_ and what she does in the city
of Washington!"

"Sir!" exclaimed the countess, giving him a look of rebuke, which was
intended to silence these unpalatable truths.

"You are right, M. de Bois," answered Bertha, not noticing the furious
glance of her aunt. "That was a random shaft of yours, but it hits the
mark, and strikes me as well as my aunt; yet I thank you for it; I thank
you for defending Madeleine; I thank you for befriending her. I shall
never forget it--never!"

Bertha frankly stretched out her hand to him; he took it with joyful
emotion.

"Whom would she have to defend her if I did not, since her family
discard her? Since even an able young lawyer utters not a word to plead
her cause?" he added, looking reproachfully at Maurice. "But she shall
never lack a defender while I live, for I love her as a sister! I
venerate her as a saint. To me she is the type of all that is best and
noblest in the world! The type of that which is greater, more valuable
than glory, more useful than fame, more _noble_ than the blood of
countesses and duchesses--_honest labor!_"

Bertha's responsive look spoke her approval.

"And what do I not owe her, myself?" continued M. de Bois. "It was her
words, long before her sorrows began, which rendered me conscious of the
inert purposelessness of my own existence. It was the effect produced
upon me by those words which made me resolve to throw off my sluggish,
indolent melancholy and inactivity, and rise up to be one of the world's
'_doers_,' not '_breathers_' only. The change I feel in myself came
through her; even the very power of speaking to you thus freely comes
through her, for she encouraged me to conquer my diffidence, she made me
despise my weak self-consciousness, and I cannot offer her a sufficient
return; no, not if I took up arms against the whole world, her own
family included, in her defence! In my presence, no one shall ever
asperse her nobility of word, deed, or act!"

Bertha's speaking eyes thanked him and encouraged him again.

In spite of the manifest rage of the countess he went on,--

"But Mademoiselle Madeleine now holds a position which needs no
champion. She has made that position herself, by her own energy and
industry, and the unimpeachable purity of her conduct. In t