parated by difference in education, such
repugnance is increased by innumerable trifles. When Claire married
Georges, the grandfather said to Madame Fromont:

"If your daughter wishes, I will give her a royal present; but she must
ask for it."

But Claire received nothing, because she would not ask for anything.

What a bitter humiliation to come, three years later, to beg a hundred
thousand francs from the generosity she had formerly spurned, to humble
herself, to face the endless sermons, the sneering raillery, the whole
seasoned with Berrichon jests, with phrases smacking of the soil, with
the taunts, often well-deserved, which narrow, but logical, minds can
utter on occasion, and which sting with their vulgar patois like an
insult from an inferior!

Poor Claire! Her husband and her father were about to be humiliated in
her person. She must necessarily confess the failure of the one, the
downfall of the house which the other had founded and of which he had
been so proud while he lived. The thought that she would be called upon
to defend all that she loved best in the world made her strong and weak
at the same time.

It was eleven o'clock when she reached Savigny. As she had given no
warning of her visit, the carriage from the chateau was not at the
station, and she had no choice but to walk.

It was a cold morning and the roads were dry and hard. The north wind
blew freely across the arid fields and the river, and swept unopposed
through the leafless trees and bushes. The chateau appeared under the
low-hanging clouds, with its long line of low walls and hedges separating
it from the surrounding fields. The slates on the roof were as dark as
the sky they reflected; and that magnificent summer residence, completely
transformed by the bitter, silent winter, without a leaf on its trees or
a pigeon on its roofs, showed no life save in its rippling brooks and the
murmuring of the tall poplars as they bowed majestically to one another,
shaking the magpies' nests hidden among their highest branches.

At a distance Claire fancied that the home of her youth wore a surly,
depressed air. It seemed to het that Savigny watched her approach with
the cold, aristocratic expression which it assumed for passengers on the
highroad, who stopped at the iron bars of its gateways.

Oh! the cruel aspect of everything!

And yet not so cruel after all. For, with its tightly closed exterior,
Savigny seemed to say to her, "Begone--do n