d her parents, wealthy silk-merchants,
had brought her up like the daughter of an archduchess desired to
marry some sovereign prince.

But at fifteen she had lost her mother. Her father, soon tired of
his lonely fireside, commenced to seek away from home some diversion
from his sorrow.

He was a man of weak mind,--one of those marked in advance to play
the part of eternal dupes. Having money, he found many friends.
Having once tasted the cup of facile pleasures, he yielded readily
to its intoxication. Suppers, cards, amusements, absorbed his
time, to the utter detriment of his business. And, eighteen months
after his wife's death, he had already spent a large portion of his
fortune, when he fell into the hands of an adventuress, whom, without
regard for his daughter, he audaciously brought beneath his own roof.

In provincial cities, where everybody knows everybody else, such
infamies are almost impossible. They are not quite so rare in Paris,
where one is, so to speak, lost in the crowd, and where the
restraining power of the neighbor's opinion is lacking.

For two years the poor girl, condemned to bear this illegitimate
stepmother, endured nameless sufferings.

She had just completed her eighteenth year, when, one evening, her
father took her aside.

"I have made up my mind to marry again," he said; "but I wish first
to provide you with a husband. I have looked for one, and found him.
He is not very brilliant perhaps; but he is, it seems, a good,
hard-working, economical fellow, who'll make his way in the world.
I had dreamed of something better for you; but times are hard, trade
is dull: in short, having only a dowry of twenty thousand francs to
give you, I have no right to be very particular. To-morrow I'll
bring you my candidate."

And, sure enough, the next day that excellent father introduced M.
Vincent Favoral to his daughter.

She was not pleased with him; but she could hardly have said that
she was displeased.

He was, at the age of twenty-five, which he had just reached, a man
so utterly lacking in individuality, that he could scarcely have
excited any feeling either of sympathy or affection.

Suitably dressed, he seemed timid and awkward, reserved, quite
diffident, and of mediocre intelligence. He confessed to have
received a most imperfect education, and declared himself quite
ignorant of life. He had scarcely any means outside his profession.
He was at this time chief accountant in