ial declaration. But to-day, my dear
minister, I am not disposed to listen to it even from you."

In these last words, there was a certain tenderness that in a measure
modified the expression of weariness or sulkiness which Marianne
suggested. Sulpice inferred therefrom an implied acceptance of his
proffered love.

"Yes," said she abruptly; "I am very sad, frightfully sad."

"Without a cause?" asked Vaudrey.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! I am not of those who allow their nerves to control them. When I am
out of sorts, there is invariably a cause. Let that be understood once
for all."

"And the cause?--I should be delighted to learn it, Marianne, for I
swear to you that I would always bear a half of your troubles and
pains."

"Thanks!--But in life there are troubles so commonplace that one could
only acknowledge them to the most intimate friends."

"You have no more devoted friend than I am," replied Vaudrey, in a tone
that conveyed unmistakable conviction.

She knew it positively. She could read that heart like an open page.

"When one meets friends like you, one is the more solicitous to keep
them and to avoid saddening them with stupid affairs."

"But why?" asked Vaudrey, drawing close to Marianne. "What troubles you?
I beseech you to tell me!"

He gazed earnestly at her eyes, seeking in the depths of their blue
pupils a secret or a confession that evaded him, and with an instinctive
movement he seized Marianne's hands which she abandoned to him; they
were quite cold. As he bent toward her to plead with her to speak, he
felt her gentle breath, inhaled the perfume of her delicate, fair skin,
and saw the exquisite curves of her body outlined beneath the black
folds of her satin peignoir. Marianne's knee gently pressed his own
while her heavy eyelids fell like veils over the young woman's eyes, in
which Vaudrey thought he observed tears.

"Marianne, I entreat you, if you have any sorrow whatever, that I can
assuage, I pray you, tell me of it!"

"Eh! if it were a sorrow!--" she said, quickly withdrawing her left hand
from Sulpice's warm grasp. "But it is worse: it is a financial worry,
yes, financial," she said brusquely, on observing that Vaudrey's face
depicted astonishment.

She seized the handful of papers that she had thrown into the
work-basket, and said in a tone that was expressive of mingled wrath and
disgust:

"There now, you see that? They are bills for this house: the accounts of
cla