She raised herself to her full height, and added in a higher voice,—­

“You are master here, father; you can do as you choose.  But I—­I owe it to myself and to the sacred memory of my mother, to protest by all the means in my power; and I shall protest.”

The count stammered and stared.  The blood rose to his head.  He cried out,—­

“At last I know you, Henrietta, and I understand you. I was not mistaken.  It was you who sent M. Daniel Champcey to Miss Brandon, to insult her at her own house.”

“Sir!” interrupted M. Daniel in a threatening tone.

But the count could not be restrained; and, with his eyes almost starting from their sockets, he continued,—­

“Yes, I read your innermost heart, Henrietta.  You are afraid of losing a part of your inheritance.”

Stung by this insult, Henrietta had stepped up close to her father,—­

“But don’t you see, father, that it is this woman who wants your fortune, and that she does not like us, and cannot like us?”

“Why, if you please?”

Once before, Count Ville-Handry had asked this question of his daughter in almost the same words.  Then she had not dared answer him; but now, carried away by her bitterness at being insulted by a woman whom she despised, she forgot every thing.  She seized her father’s hand, and, carrying him to a mirror, she said in a hoarse voice,—­

“’Why?’—­you ask.  Well, look there! look at yourself!”

If Count Ville-Handry had trusted nature, he would have looked like a man of barely sixty, still quite robust and active.  But he had allowed art to spoil every thing.  And this morning, with his few hairs, half white, half dyed, with the rouge and the white paint of yesterday cracked, and fallen away in places, he looked as if he had lived a few thousand years.

Did he see himself as he really was,—­hideous?

He certainly became livid; and coldly, for his excessive rage gave him the appearance of composure, he said,—­

“You are a wretch, Henrietta!”

And as she broke out in sobs, terrified by his words, he said,—­

“Oh, don’t play comedy!  Presently, at four o’clock precisely, I shall call for you.  If I find you dressed, and ready to accompany me to Miss Brandon’s house, all right.  If not M. Champcey has been here for the last time in his life; and you will never—­do you hear?—­never be his wife.  Now I leave you alone; you can reflect!”

And he went out, closing the door so violently, that the whole house seemed to shake.

“All is over!”

Both Henrietta and Daniel were crushed by this certain conviction.

The crisis could no longer be postponed.  A few hours more, and the mischief would be done.  Daniel was the first to shake off the stupor of despair; and, taking Henrietta’s hand, he asked her,—­

“You have heard what your father said.  What will you do?”