Although your conduct towards me was ungrateful, I am actuated by the teachings of Christianity in extending to you my forgiveness, now that you are alone and unprotected. I hear from a friend of the Abbé Duloup, a venerable priest who is administering to the wounded the consolations of religion, that your Uncle Gaspard is condemned to death. Christian duty and family sentiment therefore make it essential that I should offer you a home beneath my roof. You left it in a fit of anger because I spoke of your father in terms of reprobation. But if you had watched by the death-bed of your mother, my poor sister, as I did, in the terrible garret in the Rue Maugrabine, you would not judge me so harshly. Believe me, dear child, I have at heart your welfare both material and spiritual. If you desire guidance as to the conduct of the hotel I shall be pleased to aid you with my experience. Your affectionate Aunt, Clothilde Robineau. The frigid offer well meant according to the woman’s pale lights, Félise scarcely heeded. Father or no father, uncle or no uncle, protector or no protector, she was capable of conducting a score of hotels. The last thing in the world she needed was the guidance of her Aunt Clothilde. Save for one phrase in the letter she would have written an immediate though respectful refusal and thought nothing further of the matter. But that one phrase flashed through her brain. Her mother had died in the Rue Maugrabine. They had told her she had died in hospital. Things hitherto bafflingly dark to her became clear—on one awful, tragic hypothesis. She shook with the terror of it. It was the only communication the postman had brought that late afternoon. She stood in the vestibule to read it. Fortinbras engaged in the bureau over some simple accounts looked up by chance and saw her staring at the letter with great open eyes, her lips apart, her bosom heaving. He rose swiftly, and hurrying through the side door came to her side. “My God! Not bad news?” She handed him the letter. He read, his mind not grasping at once that which to her was essential. “The priests are exaggerating. And as for the proposal——” “The Rue Maugrabine,” said Félise. He drew the quick breath of sudden realisation, and for a long time they stood silent, looking into each other’s eyes. At last she spoke, deadly white: “That woman I saw—who opened the door for me—was my mother.” She had pierced to the truth. No subterfuge he could invent had power to veil it. He made a sad gesture of admission. “Why did you hide it from me?” she asked. “You had a beautiful ideal, my child, and it would have been a crime to tear it away.” She held herself very erect—there was steel in the small body—and advanced a step or so towards him, her dark eyes fearless. “You know what you gave me to understand when I saw her?”