“You have kept a secret from me,” she said, showing him her mother’s letter.

Emmanuel bent his head.

“Marguerite, are you in great trouble?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered; “be my support,—­you, whom my mother calls ’our good Emmanuel.’” She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in knowing that her mother approved her choice.

“My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first saw you in the gallery,” he said; “but I scarcely dared to hope the time might come when you would accept them.  If you know me well, you know my word is sacred.  Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your mother’s wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.”

“You have saved us,” she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to go down to the parlor.

After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him, Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now found themselves.

“I must pay those notes at once,” said Emmanuel.  “If Merkstus holds them all, you can at least save the interest.  I will bring you the remaining seventy thousand francs.  My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.”

“Oh!” she said, “bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is asleep.  If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me.  Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!” she said, weeping and resting her forehead against the young man’s heart.

This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief:  the heart, too full, was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.

“What can we do; what will become of us?  He sees nothing, he cares for nothing,—­neither for us nor for himself.  I know not how he can live in that garret, where the air is stifling.”

“What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III., ’My kingdom for a horse’?” said Emmanuel.  “He is pitiless; and in that you must imitate him.  Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours nor his.”

“Give him my fortune?” she said, pressing her lover’s hand and looking at him with ardor in her eyes; “you advise it, you!—­and Pierquin told a hundred lies to make me keep it!”

“Alas!  I may be selfish in my own way,” he said.  “Sometimes I long for you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then!  At other times I want you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor grandeurs of wealth can separate us.”

“Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.”

“Ourselves!” he repeated, with rapture.  Then, after a pause, he added:  “The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.”