After having said, “When Daniel returns,” he had added, “if he ever returns, which is by no means sure.”

Why this proviso?  Had he any reasons to think that Daniel might perish in this dangerous campaign?  Now she remembered, yes, she remembered distinctly, that M. de Brevan had smiled in a very peculiar way when he had said these words.  And, as she recalled this, her heart sank within her, and she felt as if she were going to faint.  Was he not capable of anything, the wretched man, who had betrayed him so infamously,—­capable even of arming an assassin?

“Oh, I must warn Daniel!” she exclaimed, “I must warn him, and not lose a minute.”

And, although she had written him a long letter only the day before, she wrote again, begging him to be watchful, to mistrust everybody, because most assuredly his life was threatened.  And this letter she carried herself to the post-office, convinced as she was that to confide it to Mrs. Chevassat would have been the same as to send it to M. de Brevan.

It was astonishing, however, how the estimable lady seemed to become day by day more attached to Henrietta, and how expansive and demonstrative her affections grew.  At all hours of the day, and on the most trivial pretexts, she would come up, sit down, and for entire hours entertain her with her intolerable speeches.  She did not put any restraint upon herself any longer, but talked “from the bottom of her heart” with her “dear little pussy-cat,” as if she had been her own daughter.  The strange doctrines at which she had formerly only hinted, she now proclaimed without reserve, boasting of an open kind of cynicism, which betrayed a terrible moral perversity.  It looked as if the horrible Megsera had been deputed by Henrietta’s enemies for the special purpose of demoralizing and depraving her, if possible, and to drive her into the brilliant and easy life of sin in which so many unhappy women perish.

Fortunately, in this case, the messenger was ill-chosen.  The eloquence of Mrs. Chevassat, which very likely would have inflamed the imagination of some poor but ambitious girl, caused nothing but disgust in Henrietta’s heart.  She had gotten into the habit of thinking of other things while the old woman was holding forth; and her noble soul floated off to regions where these vulgarities could reach her no more.

Her life was, nevertheless, a very sad one.  She never went out, spending her days in her chamber, reading, or working at a great embroidery, a masterpiece of patience and taste, which she had undertaken with a faint hope that it might become useful in case of distress.  But a new source of trouble roused her soon after from this dull monotony.  Her money grew less and less; and at last the day came when she changed the last gold-piece of her nine hundred francs.  It became urgent to resort once more to the pawnbroker; for these were the first days of April, and the honeyed words of Mrs. Chevassat had given her to understand that she had better get ready to pay on the 8th her rent, which amounted to a hundred francs.