her as she heard him enter
his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with
the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without
light, without noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father
with a pistol at his head.

"Take all!" she cried, springing towards him.

She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.

"Enough, father, enough," she said; "remember your promise. If you do
not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?"

"Yes."

"Oh, mother!" she cried, turning towards Madame Claes's chamber, "YOU
would have given him all--would you not?"

"Sleep in peace," said Balthazar, "you are a good daughter."

"Sleep!" she said, "the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother's heart."

"Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
the truth."

"I comprehend our ruin," she said, leaving him.

The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
spend the day.

"Well?" he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.

"I yielded," she replied.

"My dear life," he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, "if you had
withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
adore you!"

"Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?"

"Leave the future to me," cried the young man, with a radiant look; "we
love each other, and all is well."

CHAPTER XIII

Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
well-being of the household.

During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might
be, she had come to hope in her father's genius. By an inexplicable
phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the
flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said
to herself, "If my father succeeds, we shall be happy." Claes and
Lem