ous
delicacy and exquisite outlines. Unfortunately, it was far from being
finished.

"Never mind!" she said to herself; "perhaps they will give me something
for it."

And, wrapping the dress up hastily, she hurried to offer it for sale to
the old woman who had already bought her ear-rings, and then her watch.
The fearful old hag seemed to be overcome with surprise when she saw
this marvel of skill.

"That's very fine," she said; "why, it is magnificent! and, if it were
finished, it would be worth a mint of money; but as it is no one would
want it."

She consented, however, to give twenty francs for it, solely from love
of art, she said; for it was money thrown away. These twenty francs
were, for Henrietta, an unexpected release.

"It will last me a month," she thought, determined to live on dry bread
only; "and who can tell what a month may bring forth?"

And this unfortunate girl had an inheritance from her mother of more
than a million! If she had but known it, if she had but had a single
friend to advise her in her inexperience! But she had been faithful to
her vow never to let her secret be known to a living soul; and the most
terrible anguish had never torn from her a single complaint.

M. de Brevan knew this full well; for he had continued his weekly visits
with implacable regularity. This perseverance, which had at first served
to maintain Henrietta's courage, had now become a source of unspeakable
torture.

"Ah, I shall be avenged!" she said to him one day. "Daniel will come
back."

But he, shrugging his shoulders, had answered,--

"If you count upon that alone, you may as well surrender, and become my
wife at once."

She turned her head from him with an expression of ineffable disgust.
Rather the icy arms of Death! And still the pulsations of her heart were
apparently counted. Since the end of November her twenty francs had been
exhausted; and to prolong her existence she had had to resort to the
last desperate expedients of extreme poverty. All that she possessed,
all that she could carry from her chamber without being stopped by the
concierge, she had sold, piece by piece, bit after bit, for ten cents,
for five cents, for a roll. Her linen had been sacrificed first; then
the covering of her bed, her curtains, her sheets. The mattress had gone
the way of the rest,--the wool from the inside first, carried off by
handfuls; then the ticking.

Thus, on the 25th of December, she found herself in a