“He and your father understand each other,” said she to her daughter, “that is but too evident. What is the use of struggling?”
A fugitive blush colored the pale cheeks of Mlle. Gilberte. For the past forty-eight hours she had been exhausting herself, seeking an issue to an impossible situation; and she had accustomed her mind to the worst eventualities.
“Do you wish me, then, to desert the paternal roof?” she exclaimed.
Mme. Favoral almost dropped on the floor.
“You would run away,” she stammered, “you!”
“Rather than become that man’s wife, yes!”
“And where would you go, unfortunate child? what would you do?”
“I can earn my living.”
Mme. Favoral shook her head sadly. The same suspicions were reviving within her that she had felt once before.
“Gilberte,” she said in a beseeching tone, “am I, then, no longer your best friend? and will you not tell me from what sources you draw your courage and your resolution?”