“’Good.  Thanks.  Now that I know what kind of woman she is and have seen her, I’m off!’

“What a shock this was to the mind of a young girl endowed with all the instincts of a virtuous woman!  What despair overwhelmed that simple soul!  What mental tortures quenched her unbounded gaiety, her delightful laughter, her exultant satisfaction with life!  What a conflict took place in that youthful heart up to the moment when the last guest had left!  Those were things that Joseph could not tell me.  But, the same night, Yvette abruptly entered her mother’s room just as the comtesse was getting into bed, sent out the lady’s maid, who was close to the door, and, standing erect and pale and with great staring eyes, she said: 

“‘Mamma, listen to what I heard a little while ago during the ball.’

“And she repeated word for word the conversation just as I told it to you.

“The comtesse was so stunned that she did not know what to say in reply at first.  When she recovered her self-possession she denied everything and called God to witness that there was no truth in the story.

“The young girl went away, distracted but not convinced.  And she began to watch her mother.

“I remember distinctly the strange alteration that then took place in her.  She became grave and melancholy.  She would fix on us her great earnest eyes as if she wanted to read what was at the bottom of our hearts.  We did not know what to think of her and used to imagine that she was looking out for a husband.

“One evening she overheard her mother talking to her admirer and later saw them together, and her doubts were confirmed.  She was heartbroken, and after telling her mother what she had seen, she said coldly, like a man of business laying down the terms of an agreement: 

“’Here is what I have determined to do, mamma:  We will both go away to some little town, or rather into the country.  We will live there quietly as well as we can.  Your jewelry alone may be called a fortune.  If you wish to marry some honest man, so much the better; still better will it be if I can find one.  If you don’t consent to do this, I will kill myself.’

“This time the comtesse ordered her daughter to go to bed and never to speak again in this manner, so unbecoming in the mouth of a child toward her mother.

“Yvette’s answer to this was:  ’I give you a month to reflect.  If, at the end of that month, we have not changed our way of living, I will kill myself, since there is no other honorable issue left to my life.’

“And she left the room.

“At the end of a month the Comtesse Samoris had resumed her usual entertainments, as though nothing had occurred.  One day, under the pretext that she had a bad toothache, Yvette purchased a few drops of chloroform from a neighboring chemist.  The next day she purchased more, and every time she went out she managed to procure small doses of the narcotic.  She filled a bottle with it.