“Never,” he exclaimed, “has this marriage existed, except in the brain of M. de Thaller, and, more still, of the Baroness de Thaller.  That ridiculous idea occurred to her because she likes my name, and would be delighted to see her daughter Marquise de Tregars.  She has never breathed a word of it to me; but she has spoken of it everywhere, with just enough secrecy to give rise to a good piece of parlor gossip.  She went so far as to confide to several persons of my acquaintance the amount of the dowry, thinking thus to encourage me.  As far as I could, I warned you against this false news through the Signor Gismondo.”

“The Signor Gismondo relieved me of cruel anxieties,” she replied; “but I had suspected the truth from the first.  Was I not the confidante of your hopes?  Did I not know your projects?  I had taken for granted that all this talk about a marriage was but a means to advance yourself in M. de Thaller’s intimacy without awaking his suspicions.”

M. de Tregars was not the man to deny a true fact.

“Perhaps, indeed, I have not been wholly foreign to M. Favoral’s disaster.  At least I may have hastened it a few months, a few days only, perhaps; for it was inevitable, fatal.  Nevertheless, had I suspected the real facts, I would have given up my designs —­Gilberte, I swear it—­rather than risk injuring your father.  There is no undoing what is done; but the evil may, perhaps, be somewhat lessened.”

Mlle. Gilberte started.

“Great heavens!” she exclaimed, “do you, then, believe my father innocent?”

Better than any one else, Mlle. Gilberte must have been convinced of her father’s guilt.  Had she not seen him humiliated and trembling before M. de Thaller?  Had she not heard him, as it were, acknowledge the truth of the charge that was brought against him?  But at twenty hope never forsakes us, even in presence of facts.

And when she understood by M. de Tregars’ silence that she was mistaken,

“It’s madness,” she murmured, dropping her head: 

“I feel it but too well.  But the heart speaks louder than reason.  It is so cruel to be driven to despise one’s father!”

She wiped the tears which filled her eyes, and, in a firmer voice,

“What happened is so incomprehensible!” she went on.  “How can I help imagining some one of those mysteries which time alone unravels.  For twenty-four hours we have been losing ourselves in idle conjectures, and, always and fatally, we come to this conclusion, that my father must be the victim of some mysterious intrigue.

“M.  Chapelain, whom a loss of a hundred and sixty thousand francs has not made particularly indulgent, is of that opinion.”

“And so am I,” exclaimed Marius.

“You see, then—­”

But without allowing her to proceed and taking gently her hand,