By this one word Henrietta sealed her destiny; and she knew it. She was fully¹ aware of the terrible rashness of her plan. A voice had called to her, from her innermost heart, that her honor, her life, and all her earthly hopes, had thus been staked upon one card. She foresaw clearly what the world would say the day after her flight. She would be lost, and could hope for rehabilitation² only when Daniel returned.  
If she could only have been as sure of the heart of her chosen one as she had formerly³ been! But the cunning innuendoes⁴ of the countess, and the impudent⁵ asseverations of Sir Thorn, had done their work, and shaken her faith. Daniel had been absent for nearly a year now, and during all that time she had written to him every month; but she had received from him only two letters through M. de Brevan,—and what letters! Very polite, very cold, and almost without a word of hope.
 
If Daniel upon his return should abandon her!
 
And still, the more she reflected with all that lucidity⁶ with which the approach of a great crisis inspired her, the more she became impressed with the absolute necessity of flight. Yes, she must face unknown dangers, but only in order to escape from dangers which she knew but too well. She was relying upon a man who was almost a stranger to her; but was not this the only way to escape from the insults of a wretch⁷ who had become the boon⁸ companion, the friend, and the counsellor of her father? Finally, she sacrificed her reputation, that is, the appearance of honor; but she saved the reality, honor itself.
 
Ah, it was hard! As long as the day lasted on Wednesday, she was wandering about, pale as a ghost, all over the vast palace. She bade farewell to this beloved house, full of souvenirs of eighteen years in which she had played as a child, where Daniel’s voice had caused her heart to beat loud and fast, and where her sainted mother had died. And in the evening, at table, big tears were rolling down her cheeks as she watched the stupidly-triumphant serenity⁹ of her father.
 
The next day, however, Thursday, Henrietta complained, as was agreed upon, of a violent headache; and the doctor was sent for. He found her in a violent fever, and ordered her to keep her bed. He little knew that he was thus restoring the poor girl to liberty. As soon as he had left, she rose; and, like a dying person who makes all her last dispositions¹⁰, she hastened to put every thing in order in her drawers, putting together what she meant to keep, and burning what she wished to keep from the curiosity of the countess and her accomplices¹¹.
 
M. de Brevan had recommended her not to take her jewels. She left them, therefore, with the exception of such as she wore every day, openly displayed on a chiffonnier. The manner of her escape forbade her taking much baggage; and still some linen¹² was indispensable. Upon reflection it did not seem to her inexpedient to take a small carpet- bag, which her mother had given her, and which contained a dressing- case, all the articles in which were of solid gold and of marvellously fine workmanship. When her preparations were complete, she wrote to her father a long letter, in which she explained fully the motives¹³ of her desperate resolution.
 
Then she waited. Night had fallen long since; and the last preparations for a princely entertainment filled the palace with noise and movement. She could hear the hasty steps of busy servants, the loud orders of butlers and stewards¹⁴, the hammer of upholsterers who gave here and there a final touch.
 
Soon there came the rolling of wheels on the fine gravel¹⁵ in the court- yard, and the arrival of the first guests.
 
Henceforth it was for Henrietta only a question of minutes; and she counted them by her watch with a terrible beating of her heart. At last the hands marked a quarter before ten. Acting¹⁶ almost automatically, she rose, threw an immense cashmere shawl over her shoulders; and, taking her little bag in her hand, she escaped from her room, and slipped along the passages to the servants’ stairs.
 
She went on tiptoe, holding her breath, eye and ear on the watch, ready at the smallest noise to run back, or to rush into the first open room. Thus she got down without difficulty, reached the dark hall at the foot of the staircase; and there in the shade, seated on her little bag, she waited, out of breath, her hair moist with a cold perspiration¹⁸, her teeth clattering¹⁹ in her mouth from fear. At last it struck ten o’clock; and the vibration²⁰ of the bell could still be heard, when M. de Brevan’s coupe stopped at the door.
 
His coachman was certainly a skilful²¹ driver. Pretending to have lost the control of his horse, he made it turn round, and forced it back with such admirable awkwardness, that the carriage came close up to the wall, and the right hand door was precisely²² in the face of the dark little hall in which Henrietta was standing²³. As quick as lightning M. de Brevan jumped out. Henrietta rushed forward. Nobody saw any thing.
 
A moment later the carriage slowly drove out of the court-yard of the palace of Count Ville-Handry, and stopped at some little distance.
 
It was done. In leaving her father’s house, Miss Ville-Handry had broken with all the established laws of society. She was at the mercy now of what might follow; and, according as events might turn out favorable or unfavorable, she was saved or lost. But she did not think of that. As the danger of being surprised passed away, the feverish²⁴ excitement that had kept her up so far, also subsided²⁵, and she was lying, undone²⁶, on the cushions, when the door suddenly opened, and a man appeared. It was M. de Brevan.
 
“Well, madam,” he cried with a strangely embarrassed voice, “we have conquered. I have just presented my respects to the Countess Sarah and her worthy²⁷ companions; I have shaken hands with Count Ville-Handry; and no one has the shadow of a suspicion.” And, as Henrietta said nothing, he added,—
 
“Now I think we ought to lose no time; for I must show myself again at the ball as soon as possible. Your lodgings²⁹ are ready for you, madam; and I am going, with your leave, to drive you there.”
 
She raised herself, and said, with a great effort,—
 
“Do so, sir!”
 
M. de Brevan had already jumped into the carriage, which started at full gallop³⁰; and, while they were driving along, he explained to Henrietta how she would have to conduct herself in the house in which he had engaged a lodging²⁸ for her. He had spoken of her, he said, as of one of his relatives from the provinces, who had suffered a reverse of fortune, and who had come to Paris in the hope of finding here some way to earn her living.
 
“Remember this romance, madam,” he begged her, “and let your words and actions be in conformity³¹ with it. And especially be careful never to utter my name or your father’s. Remember that you are still under age, that you will be searched for anxiously, and that the slightest indiscretion may put them upon your traces.”
 
Then, as she still kept silent, weeping, he wanted to take her hand, and thus noticed the little bag which she had taken.
 
“What is that?” he asked, in a tone, which, under its affected³³ gentleness, betrayed no small dissatisfaction.
 
“Some indispensable articles.”
 
“Ah! you did not after all take your jewels, madam?”
 
“No, certainly not, sir!”
 
Still this persistency³⁴ on the part of M. de Brevan began to strike her as odd; and she would have betrayed her surprise, if the carriage had not at that moment stopped suddenly before No. 23 Water Street.
 
“Here we are, madam,” said M. de Brevan.
 
And, lightly jumping down, he rang the bell at the door, which opened immediately. The room of the concierge³⁵ was still light. M. de Brevan walked straight up to it, and opened the door like a man who is at home in a house.
 
“It is I,” he said.
 
A man and a woman, the concierge and his wife, who had been dozing³⁶, her nose in a paper, started up suddenly.
 
“Monsieur Maxime!” they said with one voice.
 
“I bring,” said M. de Brevan, “my young kinswoman, of whom I told you, Miss Henrietta.”
 
If Henrietta had had the slightest knowledge of Parisian customs, she would have guessed from the bows of the concierge, and the courtesies of his wife, how liberally they had been rewarded in advance.
 
“The young lady’s room is quite ready,” said the man.
 
“My husband has arranged every thing himself,” broke in his wife; “it was no trifle, after the papering had been done. And I—I made a fine fire there as early as five o’clock, to take out the dampness.”
 
“Let us go up then,” said Brevan.
 
The concierge and his wife, however, were economical people; and the gas on the stairs had long since been put out.
 
“Give me a candlestick, Chevassat,” said the woman to her husband.
 
And with her lighted candle she went ahead, lighting³⁷ M. de Brevan and Henrietta, and stopping at every landing to praise the neatness of the house. At last, in the fifth story, at the entrance to a dark passage, she opened a door, and said,—
 
“Here we are! The young lady will see how nice it is.”
 
It might possibly have been nice in her eyes; but Henrietta, accustomed to the splendor³⁸ of her father’s palace, could not conceal³⁹ a gesture of disgust. This more than modest chamber⁴⁰ looked to her like a garret such as she would not have permitted the least of her maids to occupy at home.
 
But never mind! She went in bravely, putting her travelling-bag on a bureau, and taking off her shawl, as if to take possession of the lodging. But her first impression had not escaped M. de Brevan. He drew her into the passage while the woman was stirring the fire, and said in a low voice,—
 
“It is a terrible room; but prudence⁴¹ induced me to choose it.”
 
“I like it as it is, sir.”
 
“You will want a great many things, no doubt; but we will see to that to-morrow. To-night I must leave you: you know it is all important that I should be seen again at your father’s house.”
 
“You are quite right; sir, go, make haste!”
 
Still he did not wish to go without having once more recommended his “young kinswoman” to Mrs. Chevassat. He only left when she had over and over again assured him that there was nothing more to be done; and then the woman also went down.
 
The terrible emotions which had shaken and undermined Henrietta during the last forty-eight hours were followed now by a feeling of intense astonishment⁴² at what she had done, at the irrevocable step she had taken. Her quiet life had been interrupted by an event which to her appeared more stupendous than if a mountain had been moved. Standing by the mantle-piece, she looked at her pale face in the little looking-glass, and said to herself,—
 
“Is that myself, my own self?”
 
Yes, it was she herself, the only daughter of the great Count Ville- Handry, here in a strange house, in a wretched garret-room, which she called her own. It was she, yesterday still surrounded by princely splendor, waited on by an army of servants, now in want of almost every thing, and having for her only servant the old woman to whom M. de Brevan had recommended her.
 
Was this possible? She could hardly believe it herself. Still she felt no repentance⁴³ at what she had done. She could not remain any longer in her father’s house where she was exposed to the vilest⁴⁴ insults from everybody. Could she have stayed any longer?
 
“But what is the use,” she said to herself, “of thinking of what is past? I must not allow myself to think of it; I must shake off this heaviness.”
 
And, to occupy her mind, she rose and went about to explore her new home, and to examine all it contained. It was one of those lodgings about which the owners of houses rarely trouble themselves, and ............