comes to see us, she seems embarrassed, and even confused. When I take
her in my arms and embrace her, as I have been used to do from her
birth, she blushes."

"Ah, that is with delight at seeing you, or from shame."

"She seems sadder and more dejected, too, each visit she pays us."

"Because she finds our misery constantly increasing. Besides, when I
spoke to her concerning the notary, she told me he had quite ceased his
threats of putting you in prison."

"But did she tell you the price she has paid to induce him to lay aside
his threats? She did not tell you that, I dare say, did she? Ah, a
father's eye is not to be deceived; and her blushes and embarrassments,
when giving me her usual kiss, make me dread I know not what. Why, would
it not be an atrocious thing to say to a poor girl, whose bread depended
on her employer's word, 'Either sacrifice your virtuous principles, and
become what I would have you, or quit my house? And if any one should
inquire of me respecting the character you have with me, I shall speak
of you in such terms that no one will take you into their service.'
Well, then, how much worse is it to frighten a fond and affectionate
child into surrendering her innocence, by threatening to put her father
into prison if she refused, when the brute knows that upon the labour of
that father a whole family depends? Surely the earth contains nothing
more infamous, more fiendlike, than such conduct."

"Ah," replied Madeleine, "and then only to think that with the value of
one, only one of those diamonds now lying on your table, we might pay
the notary all we owe him, and so take Louise out of his power and keep
her at home with us. Don't you see, husband?"

"What is the use of your repeating the same thing over and over again?
You might just as well tell me that if I were rich I should not be
poor," answered Morel, with sorrowful impatience. For such was the
innate and almost constitutional honesty of this man, that it never once
occurred to him that his weak-minded partner, bowed down and irritated
by long suffering and want, could ever have conceived the idea of
tempting him to a dishonourable appropriation of that which belonged to
another.

With a heavy sigh, the unfortunate man resigned himself to his hard
fate. "Thrice happy those parents who can retain their innocent children
beneath the paternal roof, and defend them from the thousand snares laid
to entrap their unsuspecting youth. But who is