Mme. de Thaller, at those words, had started to her feet, pushing back her arm-chair so violently, that it rolled all the way to the wall.

“What!” she exclaimed, “you marry Gilberte Favoral,—­you!”

“I—­yes.”

“The daughter of a defaulting cashier, a dishonored man whom justice pursues and the galleys await!”

“Yes!” And in an accent that caused a shiver to run over the white shoulders of Mme. de Thaller,

“Whatever may have been,” he uttered, “Vincent Favoral’s crime; whether he has or has not stolen, the twelve millions which are wanting from the funds of the Mutual Credit; whether he is alone guilty, or has accomplices; whether he be a knave, or a fool, an impostor, or a dupe,—­Mlle. Gilberte is not responsible.”

“You know the Favoral family, then?”

“Enough to make their cause henceforth my own.”

The agitation of the baroness was so great, that she did not even attempt to conceal it.

“A nobody’s daughter!” she said.

“I love her.”

“Without a sou!”

Mlle. Cesarine made a superb gesture.

“Why, that’s the very reason why a man may marry her!” she exclaimed, and, holding out her hand to M. de Tregars,

“What you do here is well,” she added, “very well.”

There was a wild look in the eyes of the baroness.

“Mad, unhappy child!” she exclaimed.  “If your father should hear!”

“And who, then, would report our conversation to him?  M. de Tregars?  He would not do such a thing.  You?  You dare not.”

Drawing herself up to her fullest height, her breast swelling with anger, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing,

“Cesarine,” ordered Mme. de Thaller, her arm extended towards the door—­“Cesarine, leave the room; I command you.”

But motionless in her place the girl cast upon her mother a look of defiance.

“Come, calm yourself,” she said in a tone of crushing irony, “or you’ll spoil your complexion for the rest of the evening.  Do I complain? do I get excited?  And yet whose fault is it, if honor makes it a duty for me to cry ‘Beware!’ to an honest man who wishes to marry me?  That Gilberte should get married:  that she should be very happy, have many children, darn her husband’s stockings, and skim her pot-au-feu,—­that is her part in life.  Ours, dear mother,—­that which you have taught me—­is to laugh and have fun, all the time, night and day, till death.”

A footman who came in interrupted her.  Handing a card to Mme. de Thaller,

“The gentleman who gave it to me,” he said, “is in the large parlor.”

The baroness had become very pale.

“Oh!” she said turning the card between her fingers,—­“oh!”

Then suddenly she ran out exclaiming,

“I’ll be back directly.”

An embarrassing, painful silence followed, as it was inevitable that it would, the Baroness de Thaller’s precipitate departure.