iel's aunt. Alas! she was content with writing to her, and
remained.

XIX.

This inspiration was, moreover, to be the last favor which Providence
vouchsafed to Henrietta,--an opportunity which, once allowed to pass,
never returns. From that moment she found herself irrevocably insnared
in a net which tightened day by day more around her, and held her a
helpless captive. She had vowed to herself, the unfortunate girl, that
she would economize her little hoard like the blood in her veins. But
how could she economize?

She was without every thing. When M. de Brevan had gone to engage
this garret-room, he had thought of nothing; or rather (and such a
calculation was quite in keeping with his cold-blooded rascality) he had
taken his measures so that his victim must soon be in utter destitution.
Without any other clothes than those she wore on the night of her
flight, she had no linen, no shoes, not a towel even to wipe her hands,
unless she borrowed them from her friend down stairs.

Accustomed as she was to all the comforts of boundless wealth, and to
all the refinements of cleanliness, these privations became to her a
genuine martyrdom. Thus she spent in a variety of small purchases more
than a hundred and fifty francs. The sum was enormous at a time when
she could already count the days to the hour when she would be without
bread. In addition to that she had to pay Mrs. Chevassat five francs a
day for her board. Five francs were another enormous sum which troubled
her grievously; for she would have been quite willing to live on
bread and water. But in that direction she thought no economizing was
possible.

One evening she had hinted at the necessity of retrenching, when Mrs.
Chevassat had shot at her a venomous glance, which pierced her to the
very marrow of her bones.

"It must be done," she said to herself.

In her mind she felt as if the five francs were a kind of daily ransom
which she paid the estimable concierge's wife for her good-will. It
is true, that, for such a consideration, the terrible woman was all
attention for her "poor little pussy-cat;" for thus she had definitely
dubbed Henrietta, becoming daily more familiar, and adding this odious
and irritating presumption to all the other tortures of the poor girl.
Many a time poor Henrietta had been made so indignant and furious,
that she had been on the point of rebelling; but she had never dared,
submitting to this familiarity for the same reason