counsel me thus? What! while misfortune is crushing my poor father to
the earth, shall I add despair and shame to his sorrows? His friends
have deserted him; shall I, his daughter, also abandon him? Ah! if I
did that, I should be the vilest, the most cowardly of creatures! If
my father, yesterday, when I believed him the owner of Sairmeuse, had
demanded the sacrifice to which I consented last evening, I might,
perhaps, have resolved upon the extreme measure you have counselled. In
broad daylight I might have left Sairmeuse on the arm of my lover. It
is not the world that I fear! But if one might consent to fly from the
chateau of a rich and happy father, one _cannot_ consent to desert the
poor abode of a despairing and penniless parent. Leave me, Maurice,
where honor holds me. It will not be difficult for me, who am the
daughter of generations of peasants, to become a peasant. Go! I cannot
endure more! Go! and remember that one cannot be utterly wretched if
one's conscience is clean, and one's duty fulfilled!"

Maurice was about to reply, when a crackling of dry branches made him
turn his head.

Scarcely ten paces off, Martial de Sairmeuse was standing motionless,
leaning upon his gun.



CHAPTER X

The Duc de Sairmeuse had slept little and poorly on the night following
his return, or his restoration, as he styled it.

Inaccessible, as he pretended to be, to the emotions which agitate the