“Before answering your questions,” Monfréville continued, after a moment, “it is necessary that I should tell you an anecdote of my youth. Please give me your attention.--I was just twenty-two years old; I was independently rich, absolutely master of my actions and with very little control over my passions. I loved a young lady belonging to an honorable family. She had no mother to watch over her, and during her father’s absence, my love succeeded in triumphing over her virtue. Believe me, it is very wrong to abuse a sentiment you have aroused, in order to induce the person you love to forget her duties; and it rarely happens that one is not punished for it!” Here Chérubin lost countenance and dared not look at Monfréville, while Louise, pale and trembling, felt the tears falling from her eyes. “Soon after,” continued Monfréville, “being obliged to visit England on business, I went away, promising the victim of my seduction that I would soon return to ask her father for her hand. But when I was away from her, inconstancy, too natural in a young man, led me to forget my promise. But I received a letter in which she told me that she was about to become a mother, and that I must hasten back to her, if I wished to save her honor and repair the wrong I had done. Well! I left that letter unanswered; I had another intrigue on hand! Two years passed. I returned to France, and, remembering the woman whom I had abandoned in such dastardly fashion, and the child who did not know its father, I resolved to offer my name and my hand to her to whom my conduct had been so blameworthy. But it was too late--she was married! As she was married to a man of honorable position, I felt sure that she had succeeded in concealing her weakness from all eyes; but I was wild to know what had become of my child. After many fruitless attempts, I succeeded at last in obtaining a secret interview with the woman who had loved me so well; but I found only an embittered, implacable woman, who, to all my entreaties, made no other answer than this: ‘You abandoned me when I implored you to come home and make me your wife and give your child a father. I no longer know you! I desire to forget a sin for which I blush; and, as for your daughter, all your prayers will be wasted, you shall never know what has become of her.’ This decree, pronounced by an outraged woman, was only too strictly executed. Sixteen years passed. I renewed my prayers at intervals, but in vain: they were left unanswered. And now, Chérubin, you know the cause of the fits of melancholy which sometimes assailed me in the gayest circles; of that instability of temper for which I am noted; sometimes, amid the noisy amusements of society, the thought of my child would come to my mind, and the wealth that people envied, the good-fortune that I seemed to enjoy--ah! I would willingly have sacrificed them to hold my daughter in my arms just once! But to-day my desires are granted; to-day, a friend of her whom I once