if he were bringing you any amount of money!” “And what has my brother done that we should not make much of him?” cried Eve, jealously screening Lucien. Nevertheless, when the first expansion was over, shades of truth came out. It was not long before Lucien felt the difference between the old affection and the new. Eve respected David from the depths of her heart; Lucien was beloved for his own sake, as we love a mistress still in spite of the disasters she causes. Esteem, the very foundation on which affection is based, is the solid stuff to which affection owes I know not what of certainty and security by which we live; and this was lacking between Mme. Chardon and her son, between the sister and the brother. Mother and daughter did not put entire confidence in him, as they would have done if he had not lost his honor; and he felt this. The opinion expressed in d’Arthez’s letter was Eve’s own estimate of her brother; unconsciously she revealed it by her manner, tones, and gestures. Oh! Lucien was pitied, that was true; but as for all that he had been, the pride of the household, the great man of the family, the hero of the fireside,--all this, like their fair hopes of him, was gone, never to return. They were so afraid of his heedlessness that he was not told where David was hidden. Lucien wanted to see his brother; but this Eve, insensible to the caresses which accompanied his curious questionings, was not the Eve of L’Houmeau, for whom a glance from him had been an order that must be obeyed. When Lucien spoke of making reparation, and talked as though he could rescue David, Eve only answered: “Do not interfere; we have enemies of the most treacherous and dangerous kind.” Lucien tossed his head, as one who should say, “I have measured myself against Parisians,” and the look in his sister’s eyes said unmistakably, “Yes, but you were defeated.” “Nobody cares for me now,” Lucien thought. “In the home circle, as in the world without, success is a necessity.” The poet tried to explain their lack of confidence in him; he had not been at home two days before a feeling of vexation rather than of angry bitterness gained hold on him. He applied Parisian standards to the quiet, temperate existence of the provinces, quite forgetting that the narrow, patient life of the household was the result of his own misdoings. “They are _bourgeoises_, they cannot understand me,” he said, setting himself apart from his sister and mother and David, now that they could no longer be deceived as to his real character and his future. Many troubles and shocks of fortune had quickened the intuitive sense in both the women. Eve and Mme. Chardon guessed the thoughts in Lucien’s inmost soul; they felt that he misjudged them; they saw him mentally isolating himself. “Paris has changed him very much,” they said between themselves. They were indeed reaping the harvest of egoism which they themselves had fostered.