“Have I ever complained?” she asked proudly.

“No.  Your mother and yourself, you have always religiously kept the secret of your tortures; and it was only a providential accident that revealed them to me.  But I learned every thing at last.  I know that she whom I love exclusively and with all the power of my soul is subjected to the most odious despotism, insulted, and condemned to the most humiliating privations.  And I, who would give my life for her a thousand times over,—­I can do nothing for her.  Money raises between us such an insuperable obstacle, that my love is actually an offence.  To hear from her, I am driven to accept accomplices.  If I obtain from her a few moments of conversation, I run the risk of compromising her maidenly reputation.”

Deeply affected by his emotion: 

“At least,” said Mlle. Gilberte, “you succeeded in delivering me from M. Costeclar.”

“Yes, I was fortunately able to find weapons against that scoundrel.  But can I find some against all others that may offer?  Your father is very rich; and the men are numerous for whom marriage is but a speculation like any other.”

“Would you doubt me?”

“Ah, rather would I doubt myself!  But I know what cruel trials your refusal to marry M. Costeclar imposed upon you:  I know what a merciless struggle you had to sustain.  Another pretender may come, and then—­No, no, you see that we cannot wait.”

“What would you do?”

“I know not.  I have not yet decided upon my future course.  And yet Heaven knows what have been the labors of my mind during that long month I have just spent upon an ambulance-bed, that month during which you were my only thought.  Ah! when I think of it, I cannot find words to curse the recklessness with which I disposed of my fortune.”

As if she had heard a blasphemy, the young girl drew back a step.

“It is impossible,” she exclaimed, “that you should regret having paid what your father owed.”

A bitter smile contracted M. de Tregars’ lips.

“And suppose I were to tell you,” he replied, “that my father in reality owed nothing?”

“Oh!”

“Suppose I told you they took from him his entire fortune, over two millions, as audaciously as a pick-pocket robs a man of his handkerchief?  Suppose I told you, that, in his loyal simplicity, he was but a man of straw in the hands of skillful knaves?  Have you forgotten what you once heard the Count de Villegre say?”

Mlle. Gilberte had forgotten nothing.

“The Count de Villegre,” she replied, “pretended that it was time enough still to compel the men who had robbed your father to disgorge.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Marius.  “And now I am determined to make them disgorge.”

In the mean time night had quite come.  Lights appeared in the shop-windows; and along the line of the Boulevard the gas-lamps were being lit.  Alarmed by this sudden illumination, M. de Tregars drew off Mlle. Gilberte to a more obscure spot, by the stairs that lead to the Rue Amelot; and there, leaning against the iron railing, he went on,