"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.

"He is gone."

"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"

"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English
adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."




Book the Second.



DOWNHILL.



CHAPTER I.


THE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE.

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which
Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy
five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and
chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a
forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever