silly, bourgeois air which I detest."

Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven as her only answer.

"Ah ca, madame! what have you both been talking of?" said the banker,
after a pause, pointing to the flowers. "What has happened to make
your sister so anxious all of a sudden to go to your opera-box?"

The poor helot endeavored to escape questioning on the score of
sleepiness, and turned to go into her dressing-room to prepare for the
night; but du Tillet took her by the arm and brought her back under
the full light of the wax-candles which were burning in two
silver-gilt sconces between fragrant nosegays. He plunged his light eyes
into hers and said, coldly:--

"Your sister came here to borrow forty thousand francs for a man in
whom she takes an interest, who'll be locked up within three days in a
debtor's prison."

The poor woman was seized with a nervous trembling, which she
endeavored to repress.

"You alarm me," she said. "But my sister is far too well brought up,
and she loves her husband too much to be interested in any man to that
extent."

"Quite the contrary," he said, dryly. "Girls brought up as you two
were, in the constraints and practice of piety, have a thirst for
liberty; they desire happiness, and the happiness they get in marriage
is never as fine as that they dreamt of. Such girls make bad wives."