mother, surprising her
gazing into vacancy, would ask her, "What are you thinking of?" And,
at every new vexation she had to endure, her imagination decked him
with a new quality, and she clung to him with a more desperate grasp.

"How much he would grieve," thought she, "if he knew of what
persecution I am the object!"

And very careful was she not to allow the Signor Gismondo Pulei to
suspect any thing of it, affecting, on the contrary, in his presence,
the most cheerful serenity.

And yet she was a prey to the most cruel anxiety, since she observed
a new and most incredible transformation in her father.

That man so violent and so harsh, who flattered himself never to
have been bent, who boasted never to have forgotten or forgiven any
thing, that domestic tyrant, had become quite a debonair personage.
He had referred to the expedient imagined by Mlle. Gilberte only to
laugh at it, saying that it was a good trick, and he deserved it;
for he repented bitterly, he protested, his past brutalities.

He owned that he had at heart his daughter's marriage with M.
Costeclar; but he acknowledged that he had made use of the surest
means for making it fail. He should, he humbly confessed, have
expected every thing of time and circumstances, of M. Costeclar's
excellent qualities, and of his beautiful, darling daughter's
good sense.

More than of all his violence, Mme. Favoral was terrified at this
affected good nature.

"Dear me!" she sighed, "what does it all mean?"

But the cashier of the Mutual Credit was not preparing any new
surprise to his family. If the means were different, it was still
the same object that he was pursuing with the tenacity of an insect.
When severity had failed, he hoped to succeed by gentleness, that's
all. Only this assumption of hypocritical meekness was too new
to him to deceive any one. At every moment the mask fell off, the
claws showed, and his voice trembled with ill-suppressed rage in
the midst of his most honeyed phrases.

Moreover, he entertained the strangest illusions. Because for
forty-eight hours he had acted the part of a good-natured man,
because one Sunday he had taken his wife and daughter out riding in
the Bois de Vincennes, because he had given Maxence a hundred-franc
note, he imagined that it was all over, that the past was obliterated,
forgotten, and forgiven.

And, drawing Gilberte upon his knees,

"Well, daughter," he said, "you see that I don't importune you