time--pretty dresses and love-letters.

A book might have been made of her story. Her father was persuaded
that he had sufficient reason for declining to acknowledge her, and
allowed her a bare six hundred francs a year; he had further taken
measures to disinherit his daughter, and had converted all his real
estate into personalty, that he might leave it undivided to his son.
Victorine's mother had died broken-hearted in Mme. Couture's house;
and the latter, who was a near relation, had taken charge of the
little orphan. Unluckily, the widow of the commissary-general to the
armies of the Republic had nothing in the world but her jointure and
her widow's pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the
helpless, inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul,
therefore, took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession once
a fortnight, thinking that, in any case, she would bring up her ward
to be devout. She was right; religion offered a solution of the
problem of the young girl's future. The poor child loved the father
who refused to acknowledge her. Once every year she tried to see him
to deliver her mother's message of forgiveness, but every year
hitherto she had knocked at that door in vain; her father was
inexorable. Her brother, her only means of communication, had not come
to see her for four years, and had sent her no assistance; yet she
prayed to God to unseal her father's eyes and to soften her brother's
heart, and no accusations mingled with her prayers. Mme. Couture and
Mme. Vauquer exhausted the vocabulary of abuse, and failed to find
words that did justice to the banker's iniquitous conduct; but while
they heaped execrations on the millionaire, Victorine's words were as
gentle as the moan of the wounded dove, and affection found expression
even in the cry drawn from her by pain.