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Give the flowers to Lucienne if you don't want them; she will be able to wear them to-night. Cheerio. Good-bye-ee!" "Good-bye-ee!" she echoed after him. And he closed the door on her life. In front of the Hôtel de Ville he met Arnold, returning from the club, and the two men walked off together. In a moment of impulse he related the whole story to him.

It is not my own secret that I have just told you; and, if I have confided it to you, it is because I feel that it is a great piece of good fortune for us; and there is no joy for me, that you do not share." Mlle. Lucienne wanted to ask many more particulars. But, looking at his watch, "Half-past ten!" he exclaimed, "and M. de Tregars waiting for me."

What had happened to her unfortunate servant? Visions of outrage and murder floated before the poor girl's tortured brain. At best, Lucienne was being kept out of the way in order to make her Esther feel more lonely and desperate! She remained at the window after that, watching that light in the house opposite and fingering her prayer-book, the only solace which she had.

Ten steps farther, the hind-wheel of the carriage, catching the wheel of a heavy wagon, broke to splinters; and Mlle. Lucienne was thrown into the street, whilst the driver fell over on the sidewalk. The Baron de Thaller was too practical a man to live in the same house, or even in the same district, where his offices were located.

Almost on the heels of the girl, a servant in livery entered the hotel corridor, and only went off after remaining a full quarter of an hour in busy conference with Mme. Fortin. "It's all over," thought the poor fellow. "Lucienne will not be much longer my neighbor." He was mistaken. A month went by without bringing about any change.

"I believe, my friend, that we are very near penetrating at once the mystery of your birth and the secret of the hatred that has pursued you since the day when you first set your foot in M. de Thaller's house." Admirably self-possessed as Mlle. Lucienne usually was, the quivering of her lips betrayed at this moment the intensity of her emotion. After more than a minute of profound meditation,

"Well, he is the son of that famous cashier who has just run off with twelve millions, after ruining a thousand families. It don't seem to trouble him, either; for there he is, going out to spend a pleasant day with his mistress, and to treat her to a fine dinner with the old man's money." Meantime, Maxence and Lucienne reached the commissary's house. He was at home; they walked in.

Favoral had noticed in her son the change that had surprised her so much. Under the inspiration, under the impulsion, of Mlle. Lucienne, Maxence had been suddenly taken with a zeal for work, and a desire to earn money, of which he could not have been suspected. He was no longer late at his office, and had not, at the end of each month, ten or fifteen francs' fines to pay.

And how could such things be within a step of Paris, in the midst of a society which deems its organization too perfect to consent to modify it! Mlle. Lucienne went on, speaking somewhat faster, "I was indeed free; but of what use could my freedom be to me? I knew not which way to go. A mechanical instinct took me back to Rueil.

Maxence had become crimson with rage on hearing the woman spoken of thus, whom he loved to madness, and who, far from ruining him, was making him. He returned to the Hotel des Folies in an indescribable state of exasperation. "There's the result," he said to Mlle. Lucienne, "of the step which you have urged me so strongly to take." She seemed neither surprised nor irritated.