Four years after Balthazar Claes’s departure from his home Marguerite had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister.  Two hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up the farm buildings.  Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town.  Marguerite superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment.  By the fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental of the farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her brother’s name, and the proceeds of her father’s property, towards paying off the mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation which her father’s passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes.  This redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.  Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred thousand francs of his uncle’s bequest, and by joining to it twenty thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her management a large slice of the debts.  This life of courage, privation, and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went well,—­everything prospered under the administration and influence of Marguerite Claes.

Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders.  In 1824 the whole Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired its losses.  Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.

At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his family and crown their happiness by his presence.  Marguerite had often expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day when her father would return as master of his house.  In her absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare a surprise which should make the younger sister a sharer in the restoration of the House of Claes.  The two bought a number of fine pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate the gallery.  Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing.  Wishing to testify to Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble conduct and in the self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her mother’s dying mandate, he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures, among them several of those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be brought to Douai in Marguerite’s absence, so that the Claes gallery might once more be complete.