her life, and settled wanly and hazily on her soul, like damp breath on
a mirror. But they served as points of departure for daily thoughts.
Looks and words were watched, and weighed, and pondered over with
wistful studiousness; and while Victor believed his conquest to be
achieved, his increasing assurance and gradual abandonment of disguise
were alienating him from the object of his pursuit. Julia had
accompanied him on different occasions to the château; been presented to
his father; and had been seen, admired, and kindly spoken to by the
Comtesse Meurien and her daughters. Victor had lost no opportunity of
strengthening his suit by stimulating her ambition and pride; but it was
without avail. Though pleased for a time, she soon discovered that he
was cold, heartless, and even dissolute. The intimacy betwixt them was
fast relapsing into indifference, and, on her side, into dislike, when a
certain _dénouement_ of Master Victor's notorious love-makings,
accompanied by disgraceful circumstances, determined her to put an end
to it, once and for all.

'So you are determined?' exclaimed he with ill-restrained anger, as she
repeated her resolve to him for the fourth or fifth time.

'Yes: I will have nothing more to say to you,' replied she firmly.

'Then my father and his reverence the curé may lose all hopes of me!'
returned he bitterly. 'I have done much ill--I own it: I have won no
one's esteem: I have been idle, irregular, profligate. But wherefore?
Because I have had no one to care for me. Since my mother died, I have
been left to myself, with no kind hand to guide me, no kind tongue to
warn me: what wonder that youth should go astray?'

'No one to care for you!' exclaimed Julia, not without a tinge of