“In matters like that, no, _ma tante_,” said Félise. Aunt Clothilde rose from her straight-backed chair and shook a long, threatening finger. The nail at the end was also long and not very clean. Félise often wondered whether her aunt abhorred a nail-brush by way of mortification. “When one considers all the benefits my brother has heaped on your head,” she cried in a rasping voice, “you are nothing else than a little monster of ingratitude!” Félise flared up. She did not lack spirit. “It is false,” she cried. “I adore my Uncle Gaspard. I would give him my life. I am not ungrateful. It is worse than false.” “It is true,” retorted Madame Robineau. “Otherwise you would not refuse him the desire of his heart. Without him you would have not a rag to your back, or a shoe to your foot, and no more religion than a heathen. It is to him you owe everything—everything. Without him you would be in the gutter where he fished you from.” She ended on a shrill note. Félise, very pale, faced her passionately, with a new light in her mild eyes. “What do you mean? The gutter? My father——?” “Bah! Your father! Your vagabond, ne’er-do-weel scamp of a father! He’s a scandal to the family, your father. He should never have been born.” The girl reeled. It was a foul bludgeon blow. Madame Robineau, with quick realisation of folly, checked further utterance and allowed Félise, white, quivering and vanquished, but carrying her little head fiercely in the air, to retire from the scene with all the honours of war. Madame Robineau was sorry. She had lost both temper and dignity. Her next confession would be an unpleasant matter. Possibly, however, the Abbé Duloup would understand and guess the provocation. She shrugged her lean shoulders. It was good sometimes for hoity-toity damsels to learn humility. So she sat down again, pursing her lips, and continued her embroidered stole until it was the hour of vespers. Contrary to custom, she did not summon Félise to accompany her to the Cathedral. An hour or two of solitude, she thought, not unkindly, would bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind. She went out alone. When she returned she found that Félise had left the house. * * * * *