"Very well, godmother," replied the girl, sighing. Then she added, "I asked Madame Justin to bring up your milk. Here it is. Would you like me to warm it a little?"

"Milk? milk? I'm tired of milk! The very thought of it makes me sick at my stomach. The doctor said I was to have good strong bouillon, with a chop and a bit of chicken now and then. I had some Monday and Wednesday — but this is Sunday."

"It is not my fault, godmother. I know the doctor ordered it, but one must have money to follow his directions, and it is almost impossible for me to earn twenty sous a day now."

"You don't mind spending money on clothes, I'm sure. When my comfort is concerned it is a very different thing."

"But I have had nothing but this calico dress all winter, godmother," answered Mariette, with touching resignation. "I economise all I can, and we owe two months' rent for all that."

"That means I am a burden to you, I suppose. And yet I took you in out of the street, and had you taught a trade, you ungrateful, hard-hearted minx!"

"No, godmother, I am not ungrateful. When you are not feeling as badly as you are now you are more just to me," replied Mariette, restraining her tears; "but don't insist upon going without eating any longer. It will make you feel so badly."

"I know it. I've got dreadful cramps in my stomach now."

"Then take your milk, I beg of you, godmother."

"I won't do anything of the kind! I hate milk, I tell you."

"Shall I go out and get you a couple of fresh eggs?"

"No, I want some chicken."

"But, godmother, I can't — "

"Can't what?"

"Buy chicken on credit."

"I only want a half or a quarter of one. You had twenty-four sous in your purse this morning."

"That is true, godmother."

"Then go to the rôtisseur and buy me a quarter of a chicken."

"But, godmother, I — "

"Well?"

"I haven't that much money any longer, I have only a few sous left."

"And those two ten sous pieces; what became of them?"

"Godmother — "

"Where are those two ten sous pieces, tell me?"

"I — I don't know," repeated the poor girl, blushing. "They must have slipped out of my purse. I — I — "

"You lie. You are blushing as red as a beet."

"I assure you — "

"Yes, yes, I see," sneered the sick woman, "while I am lying here on my death-bed you have been stuffing yourself with dainties."

"But, godmother — "

"Get out of my sight, get out of my sight, I tell you! Let me lie here and starve if you will, but don't let me ever lay eyes on you again! You were very anxious for me to drink that milk! There was poison in it, I expect, I am such a burden to you."

At this accusation, which was as absurd as it was atrocious, Mariette stood for a moment silent and motionless, not understanding at first the full meaning of those horrible words; but when she did, she recoiled, clasping her hands in positive terror; then, unable to restrain her tears, and yielding to an irresistible impulse, she threw herself on the sick woman's neck, twined her arms around her, and covering her face with tears and kisses, exclaimed, wildly:

"Oh, godmother, godmother, how can you?"

This despairing protest against a charge which could have originated only in a disordered brain restored the invalid to her senses, and, realising the injustice of which she had been guilty, she, too, burst into tears; then taking one of Mariette's hands in one of hers, and trying to press the young girl to her breast with the other, she said, soothingly:

"Come, come, child, don't cry so. What a silly creature you are! Can't you see that I was only joking?"

"True, godmother, I was very stupid to think you could be in earnest," replied Mariette, passing the back of her hand over her eyes to dry her tears, "but really I couldn't help it."

"You ought to have more patience with your poor godmother, Mariette," replied the sick woman, sadly. "When I suffer so it seems as if I can hardly contain myself."

"I know it, I know it, godmother! It is easy enough to be just and amiable when one is happy, while you, poor dear, have never known what happiness is."

"That is true," said the sick woman, feeling a sort of cruel satisfaction in justifying her irritability by an enumeration of her grievances, "that is true. Many persons may have had a lot like mine, but no one ever had a worse one. Beaten as an apprentice, beaten by my husband until he drank himself to death, I have dragged my ball and chain along for fifty years, without ever having known a single happy day."

"Poor godmother, I understand only too well how much you must have suffered."

"No, child, no, you cannot understand, though you have known plenty of trouble in your short life; but you are pretty, and when you have on a fresh white cap, with a little bow of pink ribbon on your hair, and you look at yourself in the glass, you have a few contented moments, I know."

"But listen, godmother, I — "

"It is some comfort, I tell you. Come, child, be honest now, and admit that you are pleased, and a little proud too, when people turn to look at you, in spite of your cheap frock and your clumsy laced shoes."

"Oh, so far as that is concerned, godmother, I always feel ashamed, somehow, when I see people looking at me. When I used to go to the workroom there was a man who came to see Madame Jourdan, and who was always looking at me, but I just hated it."

"Oh, yes, but for all that it pleases you way down in your secret heart; and when you get old you will have something pleasant to think of, while I have not. I can't even remember that I was ever young, and, so far as looks are concerned, I was always so ugly that I never could bear to look in the glass, and I could get no husband except an old drunkard who used to beat me within an inch of my life. I didn't even have a chance to enjoy myself after his death, either, for I had a big bill at the wine-shop to pay for him. Then, as if I had not trouble enough, I must needs lose my health and become unable to work, so I should have died of starvation, but for you."

"Come, come, godmother, you're not quite just," said Mariette, anxious to dispel Madame Lacombe's ill-humour. "To my certain knowledge, you have had at least one happy day in your life."

"Which day, pray?"

"The day when, at my mother's death, you took me into your home out of charity."

"Well?"

"Well, did not the knowledge that you had done such a noble deed please you? Wasn't that a happy day for you, godmother?"

"You call that a happy day, do you? On the contrary it was one of the very worst days I ever experienced."

"Why, godmother?" exclaimed the girl, reproachfully.

"It was, for my good-for-nothing husband having died, as soon as his debts were paid I should have had nobody to think of but myself; but after I took you, it was exactly the same as if I were a widow with a child to support, and that is no very pleasant situation for a woman who finds it all she can do to support herself. But you were so cute and pretty with your curly head and big blue eyes, and you looked so pitiful kneeling beside your mother's coffin, that I hadn't the heart to let you go to the Foundling Asylum. What a night I spent asking myself what I should do about you, and what would become of you if I should get out of work. If I had been your own mother, Mariette, I couldn't have been more worried, and here you are talking about that having been a happy day for me. No; if I had been well off, it would have been very different! I should have said to myself: 'There is no danger, the child will be provided for.' But to take a child without any hope of bettering its condition is a very serious thing."

"Poor godmother!" said the young girl, deeply affected. Then smiling through her tears in the hope of cheering the sick woman, she added:

"Ah, well, we won't talk of days, then, but of moments, for I'm going to convince you that you have at least been happy for that brief space of time, as at this present moment, for instance."

"This present moment?"

"Yes, I'm sure you must be pleased to see that I have stopped crying, thanks to the kind things you have been saying to me."

But the sick woman shook her head sadly.

"When I get over a fit of ill-temper like that I had just now, do you know what I say to myself?" she asked.

"What is it, godmother?"

"I say to myself: 'Mariette is a good girl, I know, but I am always so disagreeable and unjust to her that way down in the depths of her heart she must hate me, and I deserve it.'"

"Come, come, godmother, why will you persist in dwelling upon that unpleasant subject, godmother?" said the girl, reproachfully.

"You must admit that I am right, and I do not say this in any faultfinding way, I assure you. It would be perfectly natural. You are obliged almost to kill yourself working for me, you nurse me and wait on me, and I repay you with abuse and hard words. My death will, indeed, be a happy release for you, poor child. The sooner the undertaker comes for me, the better."

"You said, just now, that when you were talking of such terrible things it was only in jest, and I take it so now," responded Mariette, again trying to smile, though it made her heart bleed to see the invalid relapsing into this gloomy mood again; but the latter, touched by the grieved expression of the girl's features, said:

"Well, as I am only jesting, don't put on such a solemn look. Come, get out the chafing-dish and make me some milk soup. While the milk is warming, you can dress my arm."

Mariette seemed as pleased with these concessions on the part of her godmother as if the latter had conferred some great favour upon her. Hastening to the cupboard she took from a shelf the last bit of bread left in the house, crumbled it in a saucepan of milk, lighted the lamp under the chafing-dish, and then returned to the invalid, who now yielded the mutilated arm to her ministrations, and in spite of the repugnance which such a wound could not fail to inspire, Mariette dressed it with as much dexterity as patience.

The amiability and devotion of the young girl, as well as her tender solicitude, touched the heart of Madame Lacombe, and when the unpleasant task was concluded, she remarked:

"Talk about Sisters of Charity, there is not one who deserves half as much praise as you do, child."

"Do not say that, godmother. Do not the good sisters devote their lives to caring for strangers, while you are like a mother to me? I am only doing my duty. I don't deserve half as much credit as they do."

"Yes, my poor Mariette, I would talk about my affection for you. It is a delightful thing. I positively made you weep awhile ago, and I shall be sure to do the same thing again to-morrow."

Mariette, to spare herself the pain of replying to her godmother's bitter words, went for the soup, which the invalid seemed to eat with considerable enjoyment after all, for it was not until she came to the last spoonful that she exclaimed:

"But now I think of it, child, what are you going to eat?"

"Oh, I have already breakfasted, godmother," replied the poor little deceiver. "I bought a roll this morning, and ate it as I walked along. But let me arrange your pillow for you. You may drop off to sleep, perhaps, you had such a bad night."

"But you were awake even more than I was."

"Nonsense! I am no sleepyhead, and being kept awake a little doesn't hurt me. There, don't you feel more comfortable now?"

"Yes, very much. Thank you, my child."

"Then I will take my work and sit over there by the window. It is so dark to-day, and my work is particular."

"What are you making?"

"Such an exquisite chemise of the finest linen lawn, godmother. Madame Jourdan told me I must be very careful with it. The lace alone I am to put on it is worth two hundred francs, which will make the cost of each garment at least three hundred francs, and there are two dozen of them to be made. They are for some kept woman, I believe," added Mariette, naïvely.

The sick woman gave a sarcastic laugh.

"What are you laughing at, godmother?" inquired the girl, in surprise.

"A droll idea that just occurred to me."

"And what was it, godmother?" inquired Mariette, rather apprehensively, for she knew the usual character of Madame Lacombe's pleasantries.

"I was thinking how encouraging it was to virtue that an honest girl like yourself, who has only two or three patched chemises to her back, should be earning twenty sous a day by making three hundred franc chemises for — Oh, well, work away, child, I'll try to dream of a rest from my sufferings."

And the sick woman turned her face to the wall and said no more.

Fortunately, Mariette was too pure-hearted, and too preoccupied as well, to feel the bitterness of her godmother's remark, and when the sick woman turned her back upon her the girl drew the very urgent letter the portress had given her from her bosom, and laid it in her lap where she could gaze at it now and then as she went on with her sewing.

CHAPTER III.

A SHAMEFUL DECEPTION

Discovering, a little while afterward, that her godmother was asleep, Mariette, who up to that time had kept the letter from Louis Richard — the scrivener's only son — carefully concealed in her lap, broke the seal and opened the missive. An act of vain curiosity on her part, for, as we have said, the poor girl could not read. But it was a touching sight to see her eagerly gaze at these, to her, incomprehensible characters.

She perceived with a strange mingling of anxiety and hope that the letter was very short. But did this communication, which was marked "Very urgent" on a corner of the envelope, contain good or bad news?

Mariette, with her eyes riveted upon these hieroglyphics, lost herself in all sorts of conjectures, rightly thinking that so short a letter after so long a separation must contain something of importance, — either an announcement of a speedy return, or bad news which the writer had not time to explain in full.

Under these circumstances, poor Mariette experienced one of the worst of those trials to which persons who have been deprived of the advantages of even a rudimentary education are exposed. To hold in one's hand lines that may bring you either joy or sorrow, and yet be unable to learn the secret! To be obliged to wait until you can ask a stranger to read these lines and until you can hear from other lips the news upon which your very life depends, — is this not hard?

At last this state of suspense became so intolerable that, seeing her godmother continued to sleep, she resolved, even at the risk of being cruelly blamed on her return, — for Madame Lacombe's good-natured fits were rare, — to hasten back to the scrivener; so she cautiously rose from her chair so as not to wake the sick woman, and tiptoed to the door, but just as she reached it a bitter thought suddenly checked her.

She could not have the scrivener read her letter without asking him to reply to it. At least it was more than probable that the contents of the letter would necessitate an immediate reply, consequently she would be obliged to pay the old man, and Mariette no longer possessed even sufficient money to buy bread for the day, and the baker, to whom she already owed twenty francs, would positively refuse, she knew, to trust her further. Her week's earnings which had only amounted to five francs, as her godmother had taken up so much of her time, had been nearly all spent in paying a part of the rent and the washerwoman, leaving her, in fact, only twenty-five sous, most of which had been used in defraying the expenses of her correspondence with Louis, an extravagance for which the poor child now reproached herself in view of her godmother's pressing needs.

One may perhaps smile at the harsh recriminations to which she had been subjected on account of this trifling expenditure, but, alas! twenty sous does not seem a trifling sum to the poor, an increase or decrease of that amount in their daily or even weekly earnings often meaning life or death, sickness or health, to the humble toiler for daily bread.

To save further expense, Mariette thought for a moment of asking the portress to read the letter for her, but the poor girl was so shy and sensitive, and feared the rather coarse, though good-natured woman's raillery so much, that she finally decided she would rather make almost any sacrifice than apply to her. She had one quite pretty dress which she had bought at a second-hand clothes store and refitted for herself, a dress which she kept for great occasions and which she had worn the few times she had gone on little excursions with Louis. With a heavy sigh, she placed the dress, together with a small silk fichu, in a basket to take it to the pawnbroker; and with the basket in her hand, and walking very cautiously so as not to wake her godmother, the girl approached the door, but just as she again reached it Madame Lacombe made a slight movement, and murmured, drowsily:

"She's going out again, I do believe, and — "

But she fell asleep again without finishing the sentence.

Mariette stood for a moment silent and motionless, then opening the door with great care she stole out, locking it behind her and removing the key, which she left in the porter's room as she passed. She then hastened to the Mont de Piété, where they loaned her fifty sous on her dress and fichu, and, armed with this money, Mariette flew back to the Charnier des Innocents to find the scrivener.

Since Mariette's departure, and particularly since he had read the letter received from Dreux that morning, the old man had been reflecting with increasing anxiety on the effect this secret which he had discovered by the merest chance would have upon certain projects of his own. He was thus engaged when he saw the same young girl suddenly reappear at the door of his shop, whereupon, without concealing his surprise, though he did not betray the profound uneasiness his client's speedy return caused him, the scrivener said:

"What is it, my child? I did not expect you back so soon."

"Here is a letter from M. Louis, sir," said the young girl, drawing the precious missive from her bosom, "and I have come to ask you to read it to me."

Trembling with anxiety and curiosity, the girl waited as the scrivener glanced over the brief letter, concealing with only a moderate degree of success the genuine consternation its contents excited; then, uttering an exclamation of sorrowful indignation, he, to Mariette's intense bewilderment and dismay, tore the precious letter in several pieces.

"Poor child! poor child!" he exclaimed, throwing the fragments under his desk, after having crumpled them in his hands.

"What are you doing, monsieur?" cried Mariette, pale as death.

"Ah, my poor child!" repeated the old man, with an air of deep compassion.

"Good heavens! Has any misfortune befallen M. Louis?" murmured the girl, clasping her hands imploringly.

"No, my child, no; but you must forget him."

"Forget him?"

"Yes; believe me, it would be much better for you to renounce all hope, so far as he is concerned."

"My God! What has happened to him?"

"There are some things that are much harder to bear than ignorance, and yet I was pitying you a little while ago because you could not read."

"But what did he say in the letter, monsieur?"

"Your marriage is no longer to be thought of."

"Did M. Louis say that?"

"Yes, at the same time appealing to your generosity of heart."

"M. Louis bids me renounce him, and says he renounces me?"

"Alas! yes, my poor child. Come, come, summon up all your courage and resignation."

Mariette, who had turned as pale as death, was silent for a moment, while big tears rolled down her cheeks; then, stooping suddenly, she gathered up the crumpled fragments of the letter and handed them to the scrivener, saying, in a husky voice:

"I at least have the courage to hear all. Put the pieces together and read the letter to me, if you please, monsieur."

"Do not insist, my child, I beg of you."

"Read it, monsieur, in pity read it!"

"But — "

"I must know the contents of this letter, however much the knowledge may pain me."

"I have already told you the substance of it. Spare yourself further pain."

"Have pity on me, monsieur. If you do really feel the slightest interest in me, read the letter to me, — in heaven's name, read it! Let me at least know the extent of my misfortune; besides, there may be a line, or at least a word, of consolation."

"Well, my poor child, as you insist," said the old man, adjusting the fragments of the letter, while Mariette watched him with despairing eyes, "listen to the letter."

And he read as follows:

"'My dear Mariette: — I write you a few lines in great haste. My soul is full of despair, for we shall be obliged to renounce our hopes. My father's comfort and peace of mind, in his declining years, must be assured at any cost. You know how devotedly I love my father. I have given my word, and you and I must never meet again.

"'One last request. I appeal both to your delicacy and generosity of heart. Make no attempt to induce me to change this resolution. I have been obliged to choose between my father and you; perhaps if I should see you again, I might not have the courage to do my duty as a son. My father's future is, consequently, in your hands. I rely upon your generosity. Farewell! Grief overpowers me so completely that I can no longer hold my pen.

"'Once more, and for ever, farewell.

"'Louis.'"

While this note was being read, Mariette might have served as a model for a statue of grief. Standing motionless beside the scrivener's desk, with inertly hanging arms, and clasped hands, her downcast eyes swimming with tears, and her lips agitated by a convulsive trembling, the poor creature still seemed to be listening, long after the old man had concluded his reading.

He was the first to break the long silence that ensued.

"I felt certain that this letter would pain you terribly, my dear child," he said, compassionately.

But Mariette made no reply.

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