Gustave had listened very attentively, and without interruption, until now; when he looked up, and said with his customary sneer, "Did your Monsieur, _fort bel homme_, you say, inform you of the value of the advice, rather of the commands, you were implicitly to obey?" "Yes," answered Julie, "not then, but later. Let me go on. We arrived at M. N-----'s, an elderly grave man. He said that all he knew was that he held the money in trust for the Monsieur with me, to be given to him, with the accumulations of interest, on the death of the lady who had deposited it. If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the money, they were not known to him. All he had to do was to transfer it absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the lady's death. So you see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could have kept all from me if he had liked." "Your Monsieur is very generous. Perhaps you will now tell me his name." "No; he forbids me to do it yet." "And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah! _mon enfant_, why try to deceive me? Do I not know my Paris? A _fort bel homme_ does not make himself guardian to a _fort belle fine_ so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself." Julie's eyes flashed. "Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!" she said, half angrily, half plaintively, "I see that my guardian knew you better than I did. Never mind; I will not reproach. Thou halt the right to despise me." "Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee," said Gustave, somewhat disconcerted. "But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who knows me better than thou--does he know me at all? Didst thou speak to him of me?" "How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in which he takes an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day. He wished to complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of some worthy man who"--she paused for a moment with an expression of compressed anguish, and then hurried on--"who would recognise what was good in me,--would never reproach me for--for--the past. I then said that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee." "Marry me," faltered Gustave--"marry!" "And," continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, "he said thou wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not--no, I cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me think of thee no more. I said again, that is impossible." "But," resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, "why think of anything so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest me, and--" He approached again, seeking to embrace her. She recoiled. "No, Gustave, no. I have sworn solemnly by the memory of my lost mother--O--that I will never sin again. I will never be to thee other than thy friend--or thy wife."