y mother, as well as
daughter."

This was said brokenly, evidently from an overflowing heart. But all at
once her face saddened.

"I must talk to you sincerely," she said. "You are young, I am not;
and my age makes it a duty for me not to yield to any impulse. We
are unfortunates, you are one of the happy; you will soon be rich
and famous. Is it wise to burden your life with a wife who is in my
daughter's position?"

With the exception of a few words, this was Phillis's answer. He
answered the mother as he had answered the daughter.

"It is not for you that I speak," said Madame Cormier. "I should not
permit myself to give you advice; it is in placing myself at the point
of view of my daughter that I, her mother, with the experience of my
age, should watch over her future. Is it certain that in the struggles
of life you will never suffer from this marriage, not because my
daughter will not make you happy--from this side I am easy--but because
the situation that fate has made for us will weigh on you and fetter
you? I know my daughter-her delicacy; her uneasy susceptibility, that
of the unfortunate; her pride, that of the irreproachable. It would be a
wound for her that would make happiness give way to unhappiness, for she
could not bear contempt."

"If that is in human nature, it is not in mine; I give you my word."

He explained how he meant to arrange their life, and when she understood
that she was to live with them, she clasped her hands and exclaimed,

"Oh, my God, who hast taken my son, how good thou art to give me
another!"

CHAPTER XXXIX. CONCESSION TO CONSCIENCE

He asked nothing better than to be a son to this poor woman; in reality
he was worth much more than this unfortunate boy, effeminate and
incapable. What did this maternal hunger require? A son to love. She
would find one in her son-in-law. In seeing her daughter happy, how
could she help being happy herself?

Evidently they would be happy, the mother and daughter; and whatever
Phillis might think, still under the influence of the shameful blow,
they would forget. They would owe him this.

It was a long time since he had worked with so much serenity as on this
day; and when in the evening he went to bed, uneasy as usual about the
night, he slept as calmly as if Phillis were resting her charming head
on his shoulder and he breathed the perfume of it.

Decidedly, to make others happy was the best thing in the world, and
as long as on