As for Fontaine, although he daily and hourly got the benefit of his reputed two millions, all the money he made went like wildfire in the effort to keep up the delusion of a great fortune. He spent his principal, and the world thought he was spending his income. Besides, he feared seriously the effect his deception might have upon Claire when she found it out,--which she must, sometime or other. Then he began to have a morbid apprehension of the real Uncle Maurice turning up; and last and worst of all, he was now saddled with a reputation for brilliancy founded upon the play, the speech, and the picture,--all Marsac’s work, which had been ably sustained by the series of powerful articles signed by him and written by Marsac,--which was simply maddening. Fontaine, who was of an extremely honest and simple nature, suffered agonies from this false reputation; but the embarrassed manner and sickly smile with which he received compliments on his achievements was taken for modesty; and he passed, therefore, as the most modest as well as the most gifted young man in Paris. As for Marsac and Delphine, they were tormented in a hell of their own making. Each profoundly in love with the other, and each smarting under the supposed contempt of the other, they grew sharper in their attacks on love and marriage, and suffered accordingly. One morning, Marsac happening to go to Monsieur Duval’s quite early,--for they were now upon the most intimate terms at the house,--he found Fontaine sitting alone in a little drawing-room which communicated with the conservatory and overlooked the trees and fountains in the Luxembourg gardens. The morning papers lay on a table before him; but Fontaine, sunk in a deep armchair, was a picture of misery. Marsac, seeing Fontaine’s gloomy mood, began jovially and jauntily,-- “I say, old man, what a good time you must have had last night!” [Illustration] “Why?” asked Fontaine, sulkily. “Because you are so blue this morning.” “You would be blue too, in my place,” answered Fontaine, sullenly. “Here I am, spending every franc I make in the pretence of a fortune I haven’t got; and when I tell the truth to Claire, whom I love from the bottom of my heart, she will hate me for the fraud I have practised upon her.” This view had not occurred so forcibly to Marsac before. He took a turn about the room, and then said in an agitated voice, “Is it possible that Uncle Maurice was not a happy invention?”