The little boy was raised on a high chair, and had that morning on his face the sad, and at the same time perplexed expression of a child that grieves without knowing why. A depth of undefined sorrow was in his eyes; his father was aware, merely by observing the way in which he ate with the tips of his teeth, that a hidden trouble was tormenting this curly head. "Have you not been good this morning," he said to him, "that you are so sad?" "Yes, I have been good," Henry replied, and was again silent; then suddenly he said: "Papa, what does 'to prejudice' mean?" "It is a wrong done to a person unjustly. But why do you ask me that?" "Because Miette said the other day that someone had prejudiced her uncle against her cousin." This expression, heard for the first time, and only half understood, had struck his childish imagination, and he went on: "Could anyone prejudice you or mamma against me?" "What notions are you taking into your head?" replied the father. He had just become sensible that his son was himself perceiving the change in his mother's disposition. He looked at him, and felt that inclination to weep which comes upon a widower at the sight of his orphan child--a poor little thing who has lost the greatest of earthly blessings, who does not suspect this, but who nevertheless forebodes and guesses irretrievable misfortune. Father and son preserved silence, when through the dining-room door, which had been left open, was heard a voice, Helen's voice, completing an order to a workwoman. "For nine o'clock then, punctually." She was engaged about her ball-dress. She was not there where her glance, her smile, would have cast such a ray of joy, and Alfred reflected upon the incomprehensible, and at the same time unconquerable disaster which had brought them all there, himself, his son, and his wife--especially his wife. Heavens! what was the matter with her? He was still thinking of this many hours later, in the brougham that was taking them both in the direction of the Rue du Bac, where the Malhoures lived. She was in the corner of the carriage, with powdered hair and two patches at the corner of her thin, pale cheek. The powder, and the patches, and the dark touches that she had put round her eyes, in which the flame of fever was burning, imparted to her beauty something dangerous, and disquieting, and more inaccessible than ever to the man who was sitting by her side, and looking at her without venturing to speak.