But, when the old woman was gone, she sank into a
chair, and said,--

"I am lost!"

There was, in fact, no refuge for her, no help to be expected.

Should she return to her father, and implore the pity of his wife?
Ah! death itself would be more tolerable than such a humiliation. And
besides, in escaping from M. de Brevan, would she not fall into the
hands of M. Elgin?

Should she seek assistance at the hands of some of the old family
friends? But which?

In greater distress than the shipwrecked man who in vain examines the
blank horizon, she looked around for some one to help her. She forced
her mind to recall all the people she had ever known. Alas! she knew,
so to say, nobody. Since her mother had died, and she had been living
alone, no one seemed to have remembered her, unless for the purpose of
calumniating her.

Her only friends, the only ones who had made her cause their own,
the Duke and the Duchess of Champdoce, were in Italy, as she had been
assured.

"I can count upon nobody but myself," she repeated,--"myself, myself!"

Then rousing herself, she said, her heart swelling with emotion,--

"But never mind! I shall be saved!"

Her safety depended upon one single point: if she could manage to live
till she came of age, or till Daniel returned, all was right.

"Is it really so hard to live?" she thought. "The daughters of poor
people, who are as completely forsaken as I am, nevertheless live. Why
should not I live also?"

Why?

Because the children of poor people have served, so to say, from the
cradle, an apprenticeship of poverty,--because they are not afraid of a
day without work, or a day without bread,--because cruel experience has
armed them for the struggle,--because, in fine, they know life, and they
know Paris,--because their industry is adapted to their wants, and
they have an innate capacity to obtain some advantage from every thing,
thanks to their smartness, their enterprise, and their energy.

But Count Ville-Handry's only daughter--the heiress of many millions,
brought up, so to say, in a hothouse, according to the stupid custom of
modern society--knew nothing at all of life, of its bitter realities,
its struggles, and its sufferings. She had nothing but courage.

"That is enough," she said to herself. "What we will do, we can do."

Thus resolved to seek aid from no one, she set to work examining her
condition and her resources.

As to objects of any value, she owned the cashm