“Enough!” she interrupted in a brief tone, “enough! There is not in my whole existence a single act which would give to my bitterest enemy the right to suspect my loyalty; and now you accuse me of the basest treason. What have you to reproach me with? Have I not been faithful to the pact sworn between us. Have I not always been for you the best of comrades and the most devoted of friends? I remained silent, because the man in whom I have the fullest confidence requested me to do so; but he knew, that, if you questioned me, I would speak. Did you question me? And now what more do you want? That I should stoop to quiet the suspicions of your morbid mind? That I do not mean to do.” She was not, perhaps, entirely right; but Maxence was certainly wrong. He acknowledged it, wept, implored her pardon, which was granted; and this explanation only served to rivet more closely the fetters that bound him. It is true, that, availing himself of the permission that had been granted him, he kept himself constantly informed of Mlle. Lucienne’s doings. He learnt from her that her friend the commissary had held a most minute investigation at Louveciennes, and that the footman who went to the bois with her was now, in reality, a detective. And at last, one day, “My friend the commissary,” she said, “thinks he is on the right track now.” XXIX Such was the exact situation of Maxence and Mlle. Lucienne on that eventful Saturday evening in the month of April, 1872, when the police came to arrest M. Vincent Favoral, on the charge of embezzlement and forgery. It will be remembered, how, at his mother’s request, Maxence had spent that night in the Rue St. Gilles, and how, the next morning, unable any longer to resist his eager desire to see Mlle. Lucienne, he had started for the Hotel des Folies, leaving his sister alone at home. He retired to his room, as she had requested him, and, sinking upon his old arm-chair in a fit of the deepest distress, “She is singing,” he murmured: “Mme. Fortin has not told her any thing.” And at the same moment Mlle. Lucienne had resumed her song, the words of which reached him like a bitter raillery, “Hope! O sweet, deceiving word! Mad indeed is he, Who does think he can trust thee, And take thy coin can afford. Over his door every one Will hang thee to his sorrow, Then saying of days begone, ‘Cash to-day, credit to-morrow!’ ‘Tis very nice to run; But to have is better fun!” “What will she say,” thought Maxence, “when she learns the horrible truth?” And he felt a cold perspiration starting on his temples when he remembered Mlle. Lucienne’s pride, and that honor has her only faith, the safety-plank to which she had desperately clung in the midst of the storms of her life. What if she should leave him, now that the name he bore was disgraced!