bestow her undivided affections on the man of her choice, to dwell with
him in the silence and solitude of woods, where hard labour, privations
and poverty, would all be cheerfully borne and shared for his dear sake,
to whom her heart was given?

And such was the constant, ardent prayer of La Louve. Relying on the
assistance which Fleur-de-Marie had assured her of in the name of an
unknown benefactor, La Louve determined to make her praiseworthy
proposal to her lover, not, indeed, without the keen and bitter
apprehension of being rejected by him, for La Goualeuse, while she
brought her to blush for her past life, awakened her to a just sense
also of her position as regarded Martial.

Once at liberty, La Louve thought only of seeing "her man," as she
called him. He took exclusive possession of her mind; she had heard
nothing of him for several days. In the hopes of meeting with him in the
Isle du Ravageur, and with the determination of waiting there until he
came, should she fail to find him at first, she paid the driver of a
cabriolet liberally to conduct her with all speed to the bridge of
Asnieres, which she crossed about a quarter of an hour before Madame
Seraphin and Fleur-de-Marie (they having walked from the barrier) had
reached the banks of the river near the lime-kilns. As Martial did not
present himself to ferry La Louve across to the Isle du Ravageur, she
applied to an old fisherman, named Father Ferot, who lived close by the
bridge.

It was about four o'clock in the day when a cabriolet stopped at the
entrance of a small street in the village of Asnieres. La Louve leaped
from it at one bound, threw a five-franc piece to the driver, and
proceeded with all haste to the dwelling of old Ferot, the ferryman. La
Louve, no longer dressed in her prison garb, wore a gown of dark green
merino, a red imitation of cashmere shawl with large, flaming pattern,
and a net cap trimmed with riband; her thick, curly hair was scarcely
smoothed out, her impatient longing to see Martial having rendered an
ordinary attention to her toilet quite impossible. Any other female
would, after so long a separation, have exerted her very utmost to
appear becomingly adorned at her first interview with her lover; but La
Louve knew little and cared less for all these coquettish arts, which
ill accorded with her excitable nature. Her first, her predominating
desire was to see "her man" as quickly as possible, and this impetuous
wish was caus