“I perceive,” said M. Goudron, “you think I am not good to my grandchildren, mademoiselle--notwithstanding that I feed them and lodge them, and allow them to give me a great deal of trouble. They cost me more than any one would think. They are not young ladies like mademoiselle. Why should not they go out into the world and gain their living like others? It is because I have a soft heart,” the old man said with a grin. “They are old enough to gain their living, yet I keep them at home. Is not that much? What would you have me do more?” Helen did not know what to say. “You will not let them do anything they want to do,” she cried, with hot partisanship; but she was aware that there was not much reasonableness in the complaint, and this took away precision from her tone. “One of them wants--to marry M. Baptiste, who is not what I approve, who is not _rangé_ nor serious, but a young good-for-nothing,” said M. Goudron. “Fortunately, mademoiselle, that is put out of the question by this morning’s luck.” “Fortunately!” (“Janey,” said Helen in English, “I cannot bear him much longer. He is horrible; he is disgusting; he is like the ogre in your fairy tale.”) “Fortunately, M. Goudron! when they love one another! when they will break their hearts! when----” “Ah, bah! Excuse me, mademoiselle; you are young and romantic, like all the English ladies; but I am prudent. I think of Blanchette’s real welfare; and mademoiselle, who is Protestant, a religion of good sense, does not desire me, I hope, to bury Ursule alive in a convent. Pah!” said M. Goudron, spitting on the floor in sign of his disgust, a proceeding which elicited a restrained shriek from his young hostess. “Janey, call Margot, call Margot! I cannot put up with him any longer. No one ever does that in England,” she said, turning away with a face of horror. “Shut a girl up in a convent?” said M. Goudron. “No, you are prudent people; you have too much good sense. A girl who can do all that is necessary in a little _ménage_--who can make the kitchen very well, and mend my clothes, and do all that is needed, and is cheaper than a servant;--to shut her up in a convent, where she will no longer be of use to any one--and with a _dot_, if you please! Were they to take her with nothing, we might think of it. That is what mademoiselle would wish me to do--to give one, with her _dot_ to the nuns and priests, whom I abhor, and to give another to Baptiste Dupré; and for myself to hire a servant, who would gad about from morning to night, and cost me as much as both put together! Is that what mademoiselle would have me do?” Helen made no reply, for just then a hurried step had come in at the door, and a new tumult of anxiety, of emotion, seemed to pervade the house. There was a little pause and whispering outside, and then the door was thrown hurriedly open, and Blanchette came in, a fountain of tears.