e fortune from the stern realities of life,
there would have been no hope for her now that she was left poor and
alone--for how can a girl avoid dangers she is ignorant of? But from her
earliest childhood Marguerite had studied the difficult science of real
life under the best of teachers--misfortune. Cast upon her own resources
at the age of thirteen, she had learned to look upon everybody and
everything with distrust; and by relying only on herself, she had become
strangely cautious and clear-sighted. She knew how to watch and how
to listen, how to deliberate and how to act. Two men, the Marquis de
Valorsay and M. de Fondege's son, coveted her hand; and one of the two,
the marquis, so she believed, was capable of any crime. Still she felt
no fears. She had been in danger once before when she was little more
than a child, when the brother of her employer insulted her with his
attentions, but she had escaped unharmed.

Deceit was certainly most repugnant to her truth-loving nature; but it
was the only weapon of defence she possessed. And so on the following
day she carefully studied the abode of her entertainers. And certainly
the study was instructive. The General's household was truly Parisian
in character; or, at least, it was what a Parisian household inevitably
becomes when its inmates fall a prey to the constantly increasing
passion for luxury and display, to the furore for aping the habits and
expenditure of millionaires, and to the noble and elevated desire of
humiliating and outshining their neighbors. Ease, health, and comfort
had been unscrupulously sacrificed to show. The dining-room was
magnificent, the drawing-room superb; but these were the only
comfortably furnished apartments in the establishment. The other rooms
were bare and desolate. It is true that Madame de Fondege had a handsome
wardrobe with glass doors in her own room, but this was an article
which the friend of the fashionable Baroness Trigault could not possibly
dispense with. On the other hand, her bed had no curtains.

The aspect of the place fittingly explained the habits and manners of
the inmates. What sinister fears must have haunted them! for how could
this extreme destitution in one part of the establishment be reconciled
with the luxury noticeable in the other, except by the fact that a
desperate struggle to keep up appearances was constantly going on? And
this constant anxiety made out-door noise, excitement, and gayety a
necessity