A young and beautiful woman, consumed by ambition and covetousness, might possibly play a comedy of pure love while she was disgusted in her heart.  She might catch by vile tricks a foolish old man, and make him marry her, openly and avowedly selling her beauty and her youth.  Such things happen, and are excused by the morality of our day.  The same wicked, heartless woman might speculate upon becoming speedily a widow, and thus regaining her liberty, together with a large fortune.  This also happens, however horrible it may appear.  But that she should marry a poor old fool, with the preconceived purpose of hastening his end by a deliberate crime, there was a depth in that wickedness which terrified Daniel’s imagination.

Deeply ensconced in his chair, he was losing himself in conjectures, forgetting how time passed, and how his work was waiting for him, even the invitation to dinner which the count had given to him, and the prospect of being introduced that very evening to Miss Brandon.  Night came; and then only his concierge, who came in to see what had become of him all day long, aroused him from his torpor.

“Ah, I am losing my senses!” he exclaimed, rising suddenly.  “And Henrietta, who has been waiting for me—­what must she think of me?”

Miss Ville-Handry, at that very moment, had reached that degree of anxiety which becomes well-nigh intolerable.  After having waited for Daniel all the evening of the day before, and after having spent a sleepless night, she had surely expected him to-day, counting the seconds by the beating of her heart, and starting at the noise of every carriage in the street.  In her despair, knowing hardly what she was doing, she was thinking of running herself to University Street, to Daniel’s house, when the door opened.

In the same indifferent tone in which he announced friends and enemies, the servant said,—­

“M.  Daniel Champcey.”

Henrietta was up in a moment.  She was about to exclaim,—­

“What has kept you?  What has happened?” But the words died away on her lips.

It had been sufficient for her to look at Daniel’s sad face to feel that a great misfortune had befallen her.

“Ah! you had been right in your fears,” she said, sinking into a chair.

“Alas!”

“Speak:  let me know all.”

“Your father has come to me, and offered me your hand, Henrietta, provided I can obtain your consent to his marriage with Miss Brandon.  Now, listen to me; and then you can decide.”

Faithful to his promise, he thereupon told her every thing he had learned from Maxime and the count, suppressing only those details which would have made the poor girl blush, and also that terrible charge which he was unwilling to believe.

When he had ended, Henrietta said warmly,—­

“What!  I should allow my father to marry such a creature?  I should sit still and smile when such dishonor and such ruin are coming to a house over which my mother has presided!  No; far be it from me ever to be so selfish!  I shall oppose Miss Brandon’s plans with all my strength and all my energy.”