n!"

She, the victim of that kind of nervous exaltation which makes martyrdom
appear preferable to yielding, replied obstinately,--

"No, I shall not come down."

She did not care for any subterfuge or excuse; she did not even pretend
to be unwell; she said resolutely--

"I will not!"

And he, finding himself unable to overcome this resistance, maddened and
enraged, broke out in blasphemies and insane threats.

A chambermaid, who had been attracted by the loud voice, had come, and,
putting her ear to the keyhole, had heard every thing; and the same
evening she told her friends how the count had struck his daughter, and
that she had heard the blows.

Henrietta had always denied the charge.

Nevertheless, it was but too true, that, in consequence of these last
insults, she had come to the determination to make her protest as
public as she could by showing herself to all Paris while her father was
married at St. Clothilda to Miss Brandon. The poor girl had no one
to whom she could confide her griefs, no one to tell her that all the
disgrace would fall back upon herself.

So she had carried out her plan bravely. Putting on a very showy
costume, so as to attract as much attention as possible, she had spent
the day in driving about to all the places where she thought she would
meet most of her acquaintances. Night alone had compelled her to return,
and she felt broken to pieces, exhausted, upset by unspeakable anguish
of soul, but upheld by the absurd idea that she had done her duty and
shown herself worthy of Daniel.

She had just alighted, and was about to pay the coachman, when the
count's valet came up, and said to her in an almost disrespectful tone
of voice,--

"My master has ordered me to tell you to come to him as soon as you
should come home."

"Where is my father?"

"In the large reception-room."

"Alone?"

"No. The countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin are with him."

"Very well. I am coming."

Gathering all her courage, and looking whiter and colder than the marble
of the statues in the vestibule, she went to the reception-room, opened
the door, and entered stiffly.

"Here you are!" exclaimed Count Ville-Handry, restored to a certain
degree of calmness by the very excess of his wrath,--"here you are!"

"Yes, father."

"Where have you been?"

She had at a glance taken in the whole room; and at the sight of the new
countess, and those whom she called her accomplices, all her resentment
aro