ideas, only she never allowed them
to be intrusive. She seemed just like everybody else. She hated to make
herself conspicuous; the very ideal of a true lady, if one might use the
much-abused word. Professor Fortescue was reported to be still far from
well. Professor Theobald had not taken the Priory after all. It was too
large. It looked so deserted and melancholy now.

Henriette always finished her letters with an entreaty to Hadria to
return. People were talking so. They suspected the truth; although, of
course, one had hoped that the separation would be supposed to be
temporary--as indeed Henriette trusted it would prove.

Madame Bertaux, who had just returned from England to her beloved Paris,
reported to Hadria, when she called on the latter in her new abode, that
everyone was talking about the affair with as much eagerness as if the
fate of the empire had depended on it. Madame Bertaux recommended
indifference and silence. She observed, in her sharp, good-natured,
impatient way, that reforming confirmed drunkards, converting the
heathen, making saints out of sinners, or a silk purse out of a sow's
ear, would be mere child's play compared with the task of teaching the
average idiot to mind his own business.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The new _menage_ went well. Therese was a treasure, and Martha's willing
slave. Expenses were kept fairly reasonable by her care and knowledge.
Still it must not be forgotten that the little income needed supplementing.
Hadria had been aware of this risk from the first, but had faced it,
regarding it as the less perilous of the alternatives that she had to
choose between. The income was small, but it was her own absolutely, and
she must live on that, with such auxiliary sums as she could earn. She
hoped to be able to make a little money by her compositions. The future
was all vague and unknown, but one thing was at least certain: it cost
money to live, and in some way or other it had to be made. She told her
kind friend, Madame Vauchelet, of her plan. Madame Vauchelet consulted her
musical friends. People were sympathetic, but rather vague in their advice.
It was always difficult, this affair. The beginning was hard. M. Thillard,
a kindly, highly-cultivated man of about sixty, who had heard Hadria play,
took great interest in her talent, and busied himself on her behalf.

He said he would like to interest the great Jouffroy in this work. It
had so distinct and remarkable an individu