de expressly for costumes of that sort, very
easy to dress becomingly, for the very reason that they belong to no
type, and Mademoiselle Sidonie's face was one of these.

What bliss was hers when the carriage entered the long avenue, bordered
with velvety grass and primeval elms, and at the end Savigny awaiting her
with its great gate wide open!

And how thoroughly at ease she felt amid all those refinements of wealth!
How perfectly that sort of life suited her! It seemed to her that she
never had known any other.

Suddenly, in the midst of her intoxication, arrived a letter from Frantz,
which brought her back to the realities of her life, to her wretched fate
as the future wife of a government clerk, which transported her, whether
she would or no, to the mean little apartment they would occupy some day
at the top of some dismal house, whose heavy atmosphere, dense with
privation, she seemed already to breathe.

Should she break her betrothal promise?

She certainly could do it, as she had given no other pledge than her
word. But when he had left her, who could say that she would not wish him
back?

In that little brain, turned by ambition, the strangest ideas chased one
another. Sometimes, while Grandfather Gardinois, who had laid aside in
her honor his old-fashioned hunting-jackets and swanskin waistcoats, was
jesting with her, amusing himself by contradicting her in order to draw
out a sharp reply, she would gaze steadily, coldly into his eyes, without
replying. Ah! if only he were ten years younger! But the thought of
becoming Madame Gardinois did not long occupy her. A new personage, a new
hope came into her life.

After Sidonie's arrival, Georges Fromont, who was seldom seen at Savigny
except on Sundays, adopted the habit of coming to dinner almost every
day.

He was a tall, slender, pale youth, of refined appearance. Having no
father or mother, he had been brought up by his uncle, M. Fromont, and
was looked upon by him to succeed him in business, and probably to become
Claire's husband. That ready-made future did not arouse any enthusiasm in
Georges. In the first place business bored him. As for his cousin, the
intimate good-fellowship of an education in common and mutual confidence
existed between them, but nothing more, at least on his side.

With Sidonie, on the contrary, he was exceedingly embarrassed and shy,
and at the same time desirous of producing an effect--a totally different
man, in short.