lanche would require money--a large sum of money,
for whose use she would be accountable to no one.

This conviction made her resolve to take possession of about two hundred
and fifty thousand francs, in bank-notes and coin, belonging to her
father.

This sum represented the savings of the Marquis de Courtornieu during
the past three years. No one knew he had laid it aside, except his
daughter; and now that he had lost his reason, Blanche, who knew where
the hoard was concealed, could take it for her own use without the
slightest danger.

"With this," she thought, "I can at any moment enrich Aunt Medea without
having recourse to Martial."

After this little scene there was a constant interchange of delicate
attentions and touching devotion between the two ladies. It was "my
dearest little aunt," and "my dearly beloved niece," from morning until
night; and the gossips of the neighborhood, who had often commented upon
the haughty disdain which Mme. Blanche displayed in her treatment of her
relative, would have found abundant food for comment had they known that
Aunt Medea was protected from the possibility of cold by a mantle lined
with costly fur, exactly like the marquise's own, and that she made
the journey, not in the large Berlin, with the servants, but in the
post-chaise with the Marquis and Marquise de Sairmeuse.

The change was so marked that even Martial remarked it, and as soon
as he found himself alone with his wife, he exclaimed, in a tone of
good-natured raillery:

"What is the meaning of all this devotion? We shall finish by encasing
this precious aunt in cotton, shall we not?"

Blanche trembled, and flushed a little.

"I love good Aunt Medea so much!" said she. "I never can forget all the
affection and devotion she lavished upon me when I was so unhappy."

It was such a plausible explanation that Martial took no further notice
of the matter, for his mind just then was fully occupied.

The agent, whom he had sent to Paris in advance, to purchase, if
possible, the Hotel de Sairmeuse, had written him to make all possible
haste, as there was some difficulty about concluding the bargain.

"Plague take the fellow!" said the marquis, angrily, on receiving this
news. "He is quite stupid enough to let this opportunity, for which we
have been waiting ten years, slip through his fingers. I shall find no
pleasure in Paris if I cannot own our old residence."

He was so impatient to reach Paris that, on the