"You need not apologise for staying late, dear; you know how glad I am to see you. I wish the house were yours."
The girl glanced round the room that had grown so familiar to her, and with a sudden rush of feeling slipped her arm around the old man's neck and laid her fair head on his shoulder.
"I should so love to stay here with you, M. Rambert!"
The old man looked oddly at her for a moment, repressing the words that he might perhaps have wished to say, and then gently released himself from her affectionate clasp and led her to a sofa, on which he sat down by her side.
"That is one of the things that we must not allow ourselves to think about, my dear," he said. "I should have rejoiced to receive you in my home, and your presence, and the brightness of your dear fair face would have given a charm to my lonely fireside; but unfortunately those are vain dreams. We have to reckon with the world, and the world would not approve of a young girl like you living in the home of a lonely man."
"Why not?" Thérèse enquired in surprise. "Why, you might be my father."
Etienne Rambert winced at the word.
"Ah!" he said, "you must not forget, Thérèse, that I am not your father, but—his: the father of him who——" but Thérèse's soft hand laid upon his lips prevented him from finishing what he would have said.
To change the conversation Thérèse feigned concern about her own future.
"When we left Querelles," she said, "President Bonnet told me that you would tell me something about my affairs. I gather that my fortune is not a very brilliant one."