s. Go, she must go at once, alone. He sent a
servant with her, and whispered, as she entered the carriage: "Above
all things, not a word of this at home. It would kill your father." He
knew her so well, he was so sure of closing her mouth by that thought,
the villain, that he came the next day as if nothing had happened,
effusive as always and with the same ingenuous face. She never did
mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that
day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were
relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of
disgust in her smile, and sometimes she yielded to sudden outbursts of
wrath against her father, and cast scornful glances upon him, rebuking
him for his failure to watch over her.

"What is the matter with her?" Pere Ruys would ask; and Jenkins, with
the authority of a physician, would attribute it to her age and a
physical trouble. He himself avoided speaking to the girl, relying upon
time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of obtaining
what he desired, for he desired more eagerly than ever, being in the
grasp of the insane passion of a man of forty-seven, the incurable
passion of maturity; and that was the hypocrite's punishment. His
daughter's strange state caused the sculptor genuine distress; but it
was of brief duration. Ruys suddenly expired, fell to pieces all at
once, like all those whom Jenkins attended. His last words were:

"Jenkins, I place my daughter in your care."

The words were so ironical in all their mournfulness that Jenkins, who
was present at the last, could not avoid turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than sorrowful. To the feeling of
amazement at death, which she had never seen before, and which appeared
in a guise so dear to her, was added the feeling of a terrible
loneliness surrounded by darkness and perils.

Several friends of the sculptor assembled in a family council to
deliberate concerning the future of the unfortunate, penniless orphan.
They had found fifty francs in the catch-all in which Sebastien kept
his money on a little commode in the studio, well known to his needy
friends, who had recourse to it without scruple. No other patrimony, in
cash at all events; only a most superb collection of artistic objects
and curios, a few valuable pictures and some scattered outstanding
claims hardly sufficient to cover his innumerable debts. They talked of
a sale at auction. Fel