“Above all, not a word.  It would kill your father.”

He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened.  In fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one.  But, dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as it were, of her haughty ways.  She was subject to caprices, wearinesses, a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not having known how to watch over her.

“What is the matter with her?” Ruys, her father, used to say; and Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age and some physical disturbance.  He avoided speaking to the girl herself, counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite’s punishment.  This unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but this grief was of short duration.  Without warning, Ruys flickered out of life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman’s patients.  His last words were: 

“Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter.”

They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself from turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken.  To the amazement caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude surrounded by darkness and perils.

A few of the sculptor’s friends gathered together as a family council to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or fortune.  Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple.  There was no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing to cover numberless debts.  It was proposed to organize a sale.  Felicia, when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything were sold, but, for God’s sake, let them leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as usual.

“Don’t listen to them, my child.  Sell nothing.  Your old Constance has an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you later on.  You will take advantage of it at once, that is all.  We will live here together.  You will see, I shall not be in the way.  You will work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house.  Does that suit you?”