So everything was over! The great prosperity, the honor of the house,
everything was foundering in a moment. Even her daughter might escape
from her, and follow the infamous husband whom she adored in spite of
his faults--perhaps because of his very faults--and might drag on a
weary existence in a strange land, which would terminate in death.

For that sweet and delicate child could not live without material
comforts and mental ease, and her husband was doomed to go on from bad
to worse, and would drag her down with him! The mistress pictured her
daughter, that child whom she had brought up with the tenderest care,
dying on a pallet, and the husband, odious to the last, refusing her
admission to the room where Micheline was in agony.

A fearful feeling of anger overcame her. Her motherly love gained the
mastery, and in the silence of the room she roared out these words:

"That shall not be!"

The opening of the door recalled her to her senses, and she rose. It was
Marechal, greatly agitated. After Cayrol's arrival, not knowing what
to do, he had gone to the Universal Credit Company, and there, to
his astonishment, had found the offices closed. He had heard from the
porter, one of those superb personages dressed in blue and red cloth,
who were so important in the eyes of the shareholders, that the evening
before, owing to the complaint of a director, the police had entered the
offices, and taken the books away, and that the official seal had been
placed on the doors. Marechal, much alarmed, had hastened back to Madame
Desvarennes to apprise her of the fact. It was evidently necessary to
take immediate steps to meet this new complication. Was this indeed the
beginning of legal proceedings? And if so how would the Prince come out
of it?

Madame Desvarennes listened to Marechal, without uttering a word. Events
were hurrying on even quicker than she had dreaded. The fears of the
interested shareholders outran even the hatred of Cayrol. What would the
judges call Herzog's underhand dealings? Would it be embezzlement? Or
forgery? Would they come and arrest the Prince at her house? The house
of Desvarennes, which had never received a visit from a sheriff's
officer, was it to be disgraced now by the presence of the police?

The mistress, in that fatal hour, became herself again. The
strong-minded woman of old reappeared. Marechal was more alarmed at this
sudden vigor than he had been at her late depression. When he saw