or which a fashionable store paid her very good prices.
There were days in summer when she earned three francs.

The blow had been a severe one; she did not conceal it. Gradually,
however, she had become reconciled to it, and taken up this habit of
economizing with unflinching severity, and down to the smallest
details. At present, she felt in these very privations a kind of secret
satisfaction which results from the sense of having accomplished a
duty,--a satisfaction all the greater, the harder the duty is.

What duty, she did not say.

"That lady is a noble creature among many!" said Henrietta to herself
that night, when she retired after a modest repast.

Still she could not get over the mystery which surrounded the lives of
these two personages, whom fate, relenting at last, had placed in her
way. What was the mystery in the past of this brother and sister? For
there was one; and, so far from trying to conceal it, they had begged
Henrietta not to inquire into it. And how was their past connected
with her own past? How could their future depend in any way on her own
future?

But fatigue soon made an end to her meditations, and confused her ideas;
and, for the first time in two years, she fell asleep with a sense
of perfect security; she slept peacefully, without starting at the
slightest noise, without being troubled by silence, without wondering
whether her enemies were watching her, without suspecting the very walls
of her room.

When she awoke next morning, calm and refreshed, it was broad daylight,
nearly ten o'clock; and a pale ray of the sun was playing over the
polished furniture. When she opened her eyes, she saw the dealer's
sister standing at the foot of her bed, like a good genius who had been
watching over her slumbers.

"Oh, how lazy I am!" she exclaimed with the hearty laugh of a child; for
she felt quite at home in this little bedroom, where she had only spent
a night; she felt as much at home here as in her father's palace when
her mother was still alive; and it seemed to her as if she had lived
here many a year.

"My brother was here about half an hour ago to talk with you," said the
old lady; "but we did not like to wake you. You needed repose so much!
He will be back in the evening, and dine with us."

The bright smile which had lighted up Henrietta's face went out
instantly. Absorbed in the happiness of the moment, she had forgotten
every thing; and these few words brought her back to