way from Marseilles; the house of Mongenod, with whom he corresponds, will know his address.  Go to him, my Melchior, tell him that you love me; but do not try to tell him how I love you,—­let that be forever between ourselves and God.  I, my dear one, am about to tell everything to my mother.  Her heart will justify my conduct; she will rejoice in our secret poem, so romantic, human and divine in one.

  You have the confession of the daughter; you must now obtain the
  consent of the Comte de La Bastie, father of your

Modeste.

  P.S.—­Above all, do not come to Havre without having first
  obtained my father’s consent.  If you love me you will not fail to
  find him on his way through Paris.

“What are you doing, up at this hour, Mademoiselle Modeste?” said the voice of Dumay at her door.

“Writing to my father,” she answered; “did you not tell me you should start in the morning?”

Dumay had nothing to say to that, and he went to bed, while Modeste wrote another long letter, this time to her father.

On the morrow, Francois Cochet, terrified at seeing the Havre postmark on the envelope which Ernest had mailed the night before, brought her young mistress the following letter and took away the one which Modeste had written:—­

To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M.,—­My heart tells me that you were the woman so carefully veiled and disguised, and seated between Monsieur and Madame Latournelle, who have but one child, a son.  Ah, my love, if you have only a modest station, without distinction, without importance, without money even, you do not know how happy that would make me.  You ought to understand me by this time; why will you not tell me the truth?  I am no poet, —­except in heart, through love, through you.  Oh! what power of affection there is in me to keep me here in this hotel, instead of mounting to Ingouville which I can see from my windows.  Will you ever love me as I love you?  To leave Havre in such uncertainty!  Am I not punished for loving you as if I had committed a crime?  But I obey you blindly.  Let me have a letter quickly, for if you have been mysterious, I have returned you mystery for mystery, and I must at last throw off my disguise, show you the poet that I am, and abdicate my borrowed glory.

This letter made Modeste terribly uneasy.  She could not get back the one which Francoise had carried away before she came to the last words, whose meaning she now sought by reading them again and again; but she went to her own room and wrote an answer in which she demanded an immediate explanation.

CHAPTER XIV

MATTERS GROWN COMPLICATED

During these little events other little events were going on in Havre, which caused Modeste to forget her present uneasiness.  Dumay went down to Havre early in the morning, and soon discovered that no architect had been in town the day before.  Furious at Butscha’s lie, which revealed a conspiracy of which he was resolved to know the meaning, he rushed from the mayor’s office to his friend Latournelle.