And to fill up the measure, from excessive delicacy, and fearing to wound his friend’s oversensitive feelings, Daniel had omitted to inform Henrietta of certain most important circumstances.  Thus he only told her, that, if flight became her only means of escape from actual danger, she need not hesitate from pecuniary considerations; that he had foreseen every thing, and made the needful preparations.

How could she guess from this, that the unlucky man, carried away and blinded by passion, had intrusted fifty or sixty thousand dollars, his entire fortune, to his friend Maxime?  Still the two friends agreed too fully on the same opinion to allow her to hesitate.  Thus, when she fell asleep, she had formed a decision.  She had vowed to herself that she would meet all the torments they might inflict upon her, with the stoicism of the Indian who is bound to the stake, and to be, among her enemies, like a dead person, whom no insult can galvanize into the semblance of life.

During the following weeks it was not so difficult for her to keep her promises.  Whether it were weariness or calculation, they seemed to forget her.  Except at meals, they took no more notice of her than if she had not been in existence.

That sudden access of affection which had moved Count Ville-Handry on that evening when he thought his daughter in danger had long since passed away.  He only honored her with ironical glances, and never addressed a word to her.  The countess observed a kind of affectionate reserve, like a well-disposed person who has seen all her advances repelled, and who is hurt, but quite ready to be friends at the first sign.  Mrs. Brian never opened her thin lips but to growl out some unpleasant remark, of which a single word was intelligible:  shocking!  There remained the Hon. M. Elgin, whose sympathetic pity showed itself daily more clearly.  But, since Maxime’s warning, Henrietta avoided him anxiously.

She was thus leading a truly wretched life in this magnificent palace, in which she was kept a prisoner by her father’s orders; for such she was; she could no longer disguise it from herself.  She felt at every moment that she was watched, and overlooked most jealously, even when they seemed to forget her most completely.  The great gates, formerly almost always open, were now kept carefully closed; and, when they were opened to admit a carriage, the concierge mounted guard before them, as if he were the keeper of a jail.  The little garden-gate had been secured by two additional enormous locks; and whenever Henrietta, during her walks in the garden, came near it, she saw one of the gardeners watch her with anxious eyes.  They were apparently afraid, not only that she might escape, but that she might keep up secret communications with the outer world.  She wanted to be clear about that; and one morning she asked her father’s permission to send to the Duchess of Champdoce, and beg her to come and spend the day with her.  But Count Ville-Handry brutally replied that he did not want to see the Duchess of Champdoce; and that, besides, she was not in Paris, as her husband had taken her south to hasten her recovery.