or pencil, fearing it would be all cut away,
and when I interdicted even the monosyllabic defence, for the purpose
of working up the subdued excitement a little higher, she would at last
raise her eyes and give me a certain glance, sweetened with gaiety, and
pointed with defiance, which, to speak truth, thrilled me as nothing had
ever done, and made me, in a fashion (though happily she did not know
it), her subject, if not her slave. After such little scenes her spirits
would maintain their flow, often for some hours, and, as I remarked
before, her health therefrom took a sustenance and vigour which,
previously to the event of her aunt's death and her dismissal, had
almost recreated her whole frame.

It has taken me several minutes to write these last sentences; but I had
thought all their purport during the brief interval of descending the
stairs from Frances' room. Just as I was opening the outer door,
I remembered the twenty francs which I had not restored; I paused:
impossible to carry them away with me; difficult to force them back
on their original owner; I had now seen her in her own humble abode,
witnessed the dignity of her poverty, the pride of order, the fastidious
care of conservatism, obvious in the arrangement and economy of her
little home; I was sure she would not suffer herself to be excused
paying her debts; I was certain the favour of indemnity would be
accepted from no hand, perhaps least of all from mine: yet these four
five-franc pieces were a burden to my self-respect, and I must get
rid of them. An expedient--a clumsy one no doubt, but the best I
could devise-suggested itself to me. I darted up the stairs, knocked,
re-entered the room as if in haste:--

"Mademoiselle, I have forgotten one of my gloves; I must have left it
here."

She instantly rose to seek it; as she turned her back, I--being now
at the hearth--noiselessly lifted a little vase, one of a set of china
ornaments, as old-fashioned as the tea-cups--slipped the money under it,
then saying--"Oh here is my glove! I had dropped it within the fender;
good evening, mademoiselle," I made my second exit.

Brief as my impromptu return had been, it had afforded me time to pick
up a heart-ache; I remarked that Frances had already removed the red
embers of her cheerful little fire from the grate: forced to calculate
every item, to save in every detail, she had instantly on my departure
retrenched a luxury too expensive to be enjoyed alone.