“What does that signify if I love him?”

“Ah, true!” cried the dwarf.

At that instant Madame Mignon was saying to her friends,—­

“My daughter saw the man she loves this morning.”

“Then it must have been that sulphur waistcoat which puzzled you so, Latournelle,” said his wife.  “The young man had a pretty white rose in his buttonhole.”

“Ah!” sighed the mother, “the sign of recognition.”

“And he also wore the ribbon of an officer of the Legion of honor.  He is a charming young man.  But we are all deceiving ourselves; Modeste never raised her veil, and her clothes were huddled on like a beggar-woman’s—­”

“And she said she was ill,” cried the notary; “but she has taken off her mufflings and is just as well as she ever was.”

“It is incomprehensible!” said Dumay.

“Not at all,” said the notary; “it is now as clear as day.”

“My child,” said Madame Mignon to Modeste, as she came into the room, followed by Butscha, “did you see a well-dressed young man at church this morning, with a white rose in his button-hole?”

“I saw him,” said Butscha quickly, perceiving by everybody’s strained attention that Modeste was likely to fall into a trap.  “It was Grindot, the famous architect, with whom the town is in treaty for the restoration of the church.  He has just come from Paris, and I met him this morning examining the exterior as I was on my way to Sainte-Adresse.”

“Oh, an architect, was he? he puzzled me,” said Modeste, for whom Butscha had thus gained time to recover herself.

Dumay looked askance at Butscha.  Modeste, fully warned, recovered her impenetrable composure.  Dumay’s distrust was now thoroughly aroused, and he resolved to go the mayor’s office early in the morning and ascertain if the architect had really been in Havre the previous day.  Butscha, on the other hand, was equally determined to go to Paris and find out something about Canalis.

Gobenheim came to play whist, and by his presence subdued and compressed all this fermentation of feelings.  Modeste awaited her mother’s bedtime with impatience.  She intended to write, but never did so except at night.  Here is the letter which love dictated to her while all the world was sleeping:—­

To Monsieur de Canalis,—­Ah! my friend, my well-beloved!  What atrocious falsehoods those portraits in the shop-windows are!  And I, who made that horrible lithograph my joy!—­I am humbled at the thought of loving one so handsome.  No; it is impossible that those Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in you.  You neglected! you unloved!  I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,—­sought in vain until now.  You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,—­for