"Henceforth free to see each other daily, my father and his mistress
cease to write. But Mme. Devil does not waste her time. During a
space of less than eight months, from February to September, she
induces my father to dispose--not in her favor, she is too
disinterested for that, but in favor of her daughter--of a sum
exceeding five hundred thousand francs. In September, the
correspondence is resumed. Mme. Devil discovers that she is not
happy, and acknowledges it in a letter, which shows, by its improved
writing and more correct spelling, that she has been taking lessons.

"She complains of her precarious situation: the future frightens her:
she longs for respectability. Such is, for three months, the
constant burden of her correspondence. She regrets the time when
she was a working girl: why has she been so weak? Then, at last,
in a note which betrays long debates and stormy discussions, she
announces that she has an unexpected offer of marriage; a fine
fellow, who, if she only had two hundred thousand francs, would
give his name to herself and to her darling little daughter. For
a long time my father hesitates; but she presses her point with
such rare skill, she demonstrates so conclusively that this marriage
will insure the happiness of their child, that my father yields at
last, and resigns himself to the sacrifice. And in a memorandum
on the margin of a last letter, he states that he has just given
two hundred thousand francs to Mme. Devil; that he will never see
her again; and that he returns to live in Brittany, where he wishes,
by the most rigid economy, to repair the breach he has just made
in his fortune."

"Thus end all these love-stories," said Mme. de Thaller in a
jesting tone.

"I beg your pardon: this one is not ended yet. For many years, my
father kept his word, and never left our homestead of Tregars. But
at last he grew tired of his solitude, and returned to Paris. Did
he seek to see his former mistress again? I think not. I suppose
that chance brought them together; or else, that, being aware of his
return, she managed to put herself in his way. He found her more
fascinating than ever, and, according to what she wrote him, rich
and respected; for her husband had become a personage. She would
have been perfectly happy, she added, had it been possible for her
to forget the man whom she had once loved so much, and to whom she
owed her position.

"I have that letter. The elegant h