"My child, I have such good news for thee! Thou hast escaped--thou art
free!" and then she related all that M. Rameau had said, and finished by
producing the copy of Gustave's unhallowed journal.

When she had read the latter, which she did with compressed lips and
varying colour, the girl fell on her knees--not to thank Heaven that she
would now escape a union from which her soul so recoiled--not that she
was indeed free, but to pray, with tears rolling down her cheeks, that
God would yet save to Himself, and to good ends, the soul that she had
failed to bring to Him. All previous irritation against Gustave was
gone: all had melted into an ineffable compassion.




CHAPTER VII.

When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by the servant into
Isaura's salon, its desolate condition, stripped of all its pretty
feminine elegancies, struck him with a sense of discomfort to himself
which superseded any more remorseful sentiment. The day was intensely
cold: the single log on the hearth did not burn; there were only two or
three chairs in the room; even the carpet, which had been of gaily
coloured Aubusson, was gone. His teeth chattered; and he only replied by
a dreary nod to the servant who informed him that Madame Venosta was gone
out, and Mademoiselle had not yet quitted her own room.

If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau's stamp associates
with love of woman, it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings, a