"Ah! mother, but why did I not come alone! For myself, they will never know me in this dress." It was a fact the box-coat sufficiently disguised her shape, and she did not look very different from a great many very young men, who, like her, wore their hair long and parted in two masses on the forehead. Her features, which were delicately cut and charming, but burnt by the sun, drawn with fatigue, worn with anxiety, had a bold, masculine expression. She was slim, with long straight limbs and an easy carriage; only the clear treble of her voice could have betrayed her sex. Her mother asked her if she was hungry. She said she would be glad of something to eat, and when bread, wine and ham had been set before her, she fell to, one elbow on the table, with a pretty gluttony, like Ceres in the hut of the old woman Baubo. Then, the glass still at her lips: "Mother," she asked, "do you know when my brother will be back? I have come to speak to him." The good woman looked at her daughter in embarrassment and said nothing. "I must see him. My husband was arrested this morning and taken to the Luxembourg." By this name of "husband" she designated Fortune de Chassagne, a _ci-devant_ noble and officer in Bouille's regiment. He had first loved her when she was a work-girl at a milliner's in the Rue des Lombards, and had carried her away with him to England, whither he had fled after the 10th August. He was her lover; but she thought it more becoming to speak of him as her husband before her mother. Indeed, she told herself that the hardships they had shared had surely united them in a wedlock consecrated by suffering. More than once they had spent the night side by side on a bench in one of the London parks and gathered up scraps of broken bread under the table in the taverns in Piccadilly. Her mother could find no answer and gazed at her mournfully. "Don't you hear what I say, mother? Time presses, I must see Evariste at once; he, and he only, can save Fortune's life." "Julie," answered her mother at last, "it is better you should not speak to your brother." "Why, what do you mean, mother?" "I mean what I say, it is better you do not speak to your brother about Monsieur de Chassagne." "But, mother, I must!" "My child, Evariste can never forgive Monsieur de Chassagne for his treatment of you. You know how angrily he used to speak of him, what names he called him." "Yes, he called him seducer," said Julie with a little hissing laugh, shrugging her shoulders. "My child, it was a mortal blow to his pride. Evariste has vowed never again to mention Monsieur de Chassagne's name, and for two years now he has not breathed one word of him or of you. But his feelings have not altered; you know him, he can never forgive you." "But, mother, as Fortune has married me ... in London...." The poor mother threw up her eyes and hands: "Fortune is an aristocrat, an _emigre_, and that is cause enough to make Evariste treat him as an enemy."