even the shadow of any offensive intention in all that
Marius de Tregars had said. By the choice of his confidant, an old
man, a friend of his family, a man of the highest respectability,
he had done all in his power to make his step excusable. It was
impossible to doubt his sincerity, to suspect the fairness of
his intentions.

Mlle. Gilberte, better than almost any other young girl, could
understand the extreme measure resorted to by M. de Tregars. By her
own pride she could understand his. No more than he, in his place,
would she have been willing to expose herself to a certain refusal.
What was there, then, so extraordinary in the fact of his coming
directly to her, in his exposing to her frankly and loyally his
situation, his projects, and his hopes?

"Good heavens!" she thought, horrified at the sentiments which she
discovered in the deep recesses of her soul, "good heavens! I
hardly know myself any more. Here I am actually approving what he
has done!"

Well, yes, she did approve him, attracted, fascinated, by the very
strangeness of the situation. Nothing seemed to her more admirable
than the conduct of Marius de Tregars sacrificing his fortune and
his most legitimate aspirations to the honor of his name, and
condemning himself to work for his living.

"That one," she thought, "is a man; and his wife will have just
cause to be proud of him."

Involuntarily she compared him to the only men she knew: to M.
Favoral, whose miserly parsimony had made his whole family wretched;
to Maxence, who did not blush to feed his disorders with the fruits
of his mother's and his sister's labor.

How different was Marius! If he was poor, it was of his own will.
Had she not seen what confidence he had in himself. She shared it
fully. She felt certain that, within the required delay, he would
conquer that indispensable fortune. Then he might present himself
boldly. He would take her, away from the miserable surroundings
among which she seemed fated to live: she would become the
Marchioness de Tregars.

"Why, then, not answer, Yes!" thought she, with the harrowing
emotions of the gambler who is about to stake his all upon one card.
And what a game for Mlle. Gilberte, and what a stake!

Suppose she had been mistaken. Suppose that Marius should be one
of those villains who make of seduction a science. Would she still
be her own mistress, after answering? Did she know to what hazards
such an engagement would e