"Madame," he answered, addressing the landlady, "I entrust all
these matters to you; see that the child is properly provided
for, and I will send the requisite money."

"We had arranged that her nurse should take her away to her
own home in the country," said Madame Lavaux.

"That will do," he answered; and was about to leave the room,
when the nurse, an honest countrywoman, interposed once more,
to inquire where she should write to Monsieur to give him
tidings of his little daughter.

"I want none," he replied. "You can apply here to Madame for
money if the child lives; if it dies she will let me know, and
I need send no more." And so saying, he strode out of the
room, leaving the women with hands and eyes uplifted at the
hard-hearted conduct of the father.

For nearly two years M. Linders was absent from Paris,
wandering about, as his habit was, from one town to another, a
free man, as he would himself have expressed it, except for
the one tie which he acknowledged only in the sums of money he
sent from time to time, with sufficient liberality, to Madame
Lavaux. No news reached him of his child, and he demanded
none. But about twenty months after his wife's death, business
obliged him to go for a few weeks to Paris; and finding
himself with a leisure day on his hands, it occurred to him,
with a sudden impulse, to spend it in the country and go and
see his little girl. He ascertained from Madame Lavaux where