perhaps,
some secret escape him, when his sister interrupted him, saying
reproachfully,--

"Anthony, Anthony!"

He stopped at once. Then he resumed,--

"You are right; you are right! I forget myself here; and I ought to be
already back in Water Street. It is of the utmost importance that that
woman Chevassat should not miss me a moment to-night."

He was about to leave them, when the old lady held him back, and said,--

"You ought to go back, I know; only be careful! It is a miracle that M.
de Brevan has never met you and recognized you, during the year he has
been coming to the house in which you live. If such a misfortune should
happen now, our enemies might once more escape us. After the young
lady's desperate act, he would not fail to recognize the man who has
saved her. What can you do to avoid meeting him?"

"I have thought of that danger," he replied. "When I go back, I shall
tell the two Chevassats a little story, which will frighten them, so
that they will advise Brevan never to appear there, except at night, as
he formerly did."

Thereupon he bowed to Henrietta, and went away with the words,--

"To-morrow we will consult with each other."

The shipwrecked man who is saved at the last moment, when, strength and
spirits being alike exhausted, he feels himself sinking into the abyss,
cannot, upon feeling once more firm ground under his feet, experience
a sense of greater happiness than Henrietta did that night. For the
delicious sensation had become deeper and intenser by the evening spent
in company with Papa Ravinet's sister.

The widow, free from embarrassment as from affectation, possessed a
quiet dignity which appeared in certain words and ways she had, and
which made Henrietta guess the principal events of her life. Ruined all
of a sudden,--she did not say how,--some months after the death of her
husband, she, who had been accustomed to all the comforts of opulence
had seen herself reduced to poverty, and all its privations. This had
happened about five years ago. Since then she had imposed upon herself
the strictest economy, although she never neglected her appearance. She
had but one servant, who came every morning to clean up the house;
she herself did all the other work, washing and ironing her own linen,
cooking only twice a week, and eating cold meat on the other days, as
much to save money as to save time.

For her time had its value. She worked on her frame patterns for
embroideries, f