terward plunge him into the rapture of a senseless ecstasy by a word,
a smile, or a caress. For such was her power, and she often exercised it
mercilessly. Even after the frightful scene that Pascal had witnessed,
she had made another appeal to the baron, and he had been weak enough
to give her the thirty thousand francs which M. de Coralth needed to
purchase his wife's silence.

However, this time the baroness trembled. Her usual shrewdness had
not deserted her, and she perfectly understood all that Marguerite's
presence in that house portended. Since her husband brought this young
girl--her daughter--to her he must know everything, and have taken some
fatal resolution. Had she, indeed, exhausted the patience which she had
fancied inexhaustible? She was not ignorant of the fact that her husband
had disposed of his immense fortune in a way that would enable him to
say and prove that he was insolvent whenever occasion required; and if
he found courage to apply for a legal separation, what could she hope to
obtain from the courts? A bare living, almost nothing. In such a case,
how could she exist? She would be compelled to spend her last years
in the same poverty that had made her youth so wretched. She saw
herself--ah! what a frightful misfortune--turfed out of her princely
home, and reduced to furnished apartments rented for five hundred francs
a year!

Mademoiselle Marguerite was no less startled and horror-stricken than
Madame Trigault, and she stood rooted to the spot, exactly where the
baron had left her. Silent and motionless, they confronted each
other for a moment which seemed a century to both of them. The
resemblance--which had astonished Pascal could not fail to strike them,
for it was still more noticeable now that they stood face to face. But
anything was preferable to this torturing suspense, and so, summoning
all her courage, the baroness broke the silence by saying: "You are the
daughter of the Count de Chalusse?"

"I think so, but I have no proofs of it."

"And--your mother?"

"I don't know her; madame, and I have no desire to know her."

Disconcerted by this brief but implacable reply, Madame Trigault hung
her head.

"What could I have to say to my mother?" continued Marguerite. "That I
hate her? My courage would fail me to do so. And yet, how can I think
without bitterness of the woman who, after abandoning me herself,
endeavored to deprive me of my father's love and protection? I could
have f