“Daniel is in France!  Daniel!  Nothing more to fear; the future is ours.  I am safe now.”

But people do not die of joy; and, when she had recovered her equanimity, Henrietta understood how cruel she had been in the incoherent phrases that had escaped her in her excitement.  She rose with a start, and, seizing Mrs. Bertolle’s hands, said to her,—­

“Great God! what am I saying!  Ah, you will pardon me, madam, I am sure; but I feel as if I did not know what I am doing.  Safe!  I owe it to you and your brother, if I am safe.  Without you Daniel would find nothing of me but a cross at the cemetery, and a name stained and destroyed by infamous calumnies.”

The old lady did not hear a word.  She had picked up the despatch, had read it; and, overcome by its contents, had sat down near the fireplace, utterly insensible to the outside world.  The most fearful hatred convulsed her ordinarily calm and gentle features; and pale, with closed teeth, and in a hoarse voice, she said over and over again,—­

“We shall be avenged.”

Most assuredly Henrietta did not find out only now that the old dealer and his sister hated her enemies, Sarah Brandon and Maxime de Brevan, mortally; but she had never seen that hatred break out so terribly as to-night.  What had brought it about?  This she could not fathom.  Papa Ravinet, it was evident, was not a nobody.  Ill-bred and coarse in Water Street, amid the thousand articles of his trade, he became a very different man as soon as he reached his sister’s house.  As to the Widow Bertolle, she was evidently a woman of superior intellect and education.

How had they both been reduced to this more than modest condition?  By reverses of fortune.  That accounts for everything, but explains nothing.

Such were Henrietta’s thoughts, when the old lady roused her from her meditations.

“You saw, my dear child,” she began saying, “that my brother desires us to be ready to set out on a long journey as soon as he comes home.”

“Yes, madam; and I am quite astonished.”

“I understand; but, although I know no more than you do of my brother’s intentions, I know that he does nothing without a purpose.  We ought, therefore, in prudence, comply with his wishes.”

They agreed, therefore, at once on their arrangements; and the next day Mrs. Bertolle went out to purchase whatever might be necessary,—­ready-made dresses for Henrietta, shoes, and linen.  Towards five o’clock in the afternoon, all the preparations of the old lady and the young girl had been made; and all their things were carefully stowed away in three large trunks.  According to Papa Ravinet’s despatch, they had only about two hours more to wait, three hours at the worst.  Still they were out of their reckoning.  It was half-past eight before the good man arrived, evidently broken down by the long and rapid journey which he had just made.

“At last!” exclaimed Mrs. Bertolle.  “We hardly expected you any longer to-night.”