"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice.
"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.
"He is gone."
"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"
"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."
Book the Second.
DOWNHILL.
CHAPTER I.
THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE.
Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever known them. The man—haggard, dying—cherished a pride that had grown fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only for her husband and her child.