"Excusable! Nothing could be more natural, my angelic girl. What was there wrong in being proud of a rank which was your own, in enjoying the advantages of a position to which I had restored you? I remember at this time you were so delightfully gay, and said to me in accents I never can again hope to hear, 'Dearest father, this is too, too much happiness!' Unfortunately it was these recollections that begat in me this deceitful security." "Do you remember, my father," said Fleur-de-Marie, unable to overcome a shudder of horror, "do you remember the terrible scene that preceded our departure from Paris when your carriage was stopped?" "Yes," answered Rodolph; in a tone of melancholy. "Brave Chourineur! after having once more saved my life--he died--there, before our eyes." "Well, my father, at the moment when that unhappy man expired, do you know whom I saw looking steadfastly at me? Ah, that look--that look! it has haunted me ever since!" added Fleur-de-Marie, with a shudder. "What look? Of whom do you speak?" cried Rodolph. "Of the ogress of the _tapis-franc_!" answered Fleur-de-Marie. "That monster! You saw her!--and where?" "Did you not see her in the tavern where the Chourineur died? She was amongst the women who surrounded us." "Ah, now," said Rodolph, in a tone of despair, "I understand. Struck with horror as you were at the murder of the Chourineur, you must have imagined that you saw something prophetic in the sinister rencontre!" "Yes, indeed, father, it was so. At the sight of the ogress I felt a death-like shiver, and it seemed that under her scowl my heart, which, until then, had been light, joyous, bounding, was instantly chilled to ice. Yes, to meet that woman at the very instant when the Chourineur died, saying, 'Heaven is just!' it seemed to me as a rebuke from Providence for my proud forgetfulness of the past, which I was hereafter to expiate by humility and repentance." "But the past was forced on you, and you are not responsible for that in the sight of God!" "You were driven to it--overcome--my poor child!" "Once precipitated into the abyss in spite of yourself, and unable to quit it in spite of your remorse and despair, through the atrocious recklessness of the society of which you were a victim, you saw yourself for ever chained to this den, and it required that chance should throw you in my way to rescue you from such thraldom." "Then, too, my child, your father says you were the victim and not the accomplice of this infamy," said Clemence.