So they were going away and would leave her in peace with the children? How unexpected a _dénouement_. It never entered the simple head of Gabrielle to suspect that the man was lying. Proud as she was herself, she could understand and appreciate, and even applaud the feeling which preferred independent poverty to gilded bondage. And she had meant so well in what she had done! But put as it had just been, it did seem wrong to make a husband--even a bad one--so dependent. A man dependent on a woman is always a subject for ridicule. Woman governed by her feelings is so easily misled! Ah me! Permit me to moralize for just a minute. Why is it that the more angelic we are--the more ready to moult our earthy plumage--we should be the less fit to combat those of earth? The more guileless and innocent a woman is--quite fit to soar aloft with newly-sprouted wings--the more abjectly pitiable a victim. Perhaps it means that earth should be left to the earthy, and that angels have no business here at all. The marquise, while arranging bolts and barriers was quite under the impression that she was a martyr, that a menacing sword was dangling overhead which would fall and pierce her skull, and now she was told--and there seemed some truth in it--that she had been carried away by imagination. According to the abbé she stood convicted of hysteria! If their method of showing displeasure took the form of retreat with bag and baggage, leaving her the solitary mistress of the field, how could she be in danger? They would leave presently, declaring that the heiress had flung her money in their faces in so vulgar a fashion that self-respect compelled departure. Draped in the picturesque dignity of rags, they, not she, would wear the auriole of martyrdom--a consideration as new as disconcerting. It was satisfactory to find that Clovis, bad as she knew him to be, could be so proud. There must be much latent good in a selfish man who, to shield his manhood from smirching, will cheerfully abandon flesh-pots. His wife had calculated (and justly, too) that though he might whine and grumble, he would accept any conditions which did not withdraw the comforts which made life worth living. His wife fully intended that he should have ample means to play ducks and drakes with, but, surrounded as he was by a bad _entourage_, he must not be permitted to be master. And, lo and behold, he snapped his fingers at the money, and elected to wear the rags! Rapidly reviewing the situation, Gabrielle's heart warmed in a tepid manner to the man whom she had wrongly read. She approved the attitude he had assumed, but could not allow him to retain it. The abbé had rightly appraised the exceeding generosity of her nature and had played on it. When she called him back he was pleased to mark how clouded was her brow, how shaken was her fixed resolve. "Clovis has judged me harshly," she observed. "I never wished to drive him from his home."