"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the farewell kiss of her son. "I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave. The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines. When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Cotenoir. "How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her future sister-in-law. The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. "I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money." It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door closed heavily. M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it was not his habit to perform this office. "I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. "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 OF 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 known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only for her husband and her child.