The marriage-contract had been read and signed at six o’clock, just before a grand dinner.  At half-past five, the count had once more come to his daughter’s room.  Without telling her any thing of it, he had ordered her dressmaker to send her several magnificent dresses; and they were lying about now, spread out upon chairs.

“Dress yourself,” he said in a tone of command, “and come down!”

She, the victim of that kind of nervous exaltation which makes martyrdom appear preferable to yielding, replied obstinately,—­

“No, I shall not come down.”

She did not care for any subterfuge or excuse; she did not even pretend to be unwell; she said resolutely—­

“I will not!”

And he, finding himself unable to overcome this resistance, maddened and enraged, broke out in blasphemies and insane threats.

A chambermaid, who had been attracted by the loud voice, had come, and, putting her ear to the keyhole, had heard every thing; and the same evening she told her friends how the count had struck his daughter, and that she had heard the blows.

Henrietta had always denied the charge.

Nevertheless, it was but too true, that, in consequence of these last insults, she had come to the determination to make her protest as public as she could by showing herself to all Paris while her father was married at St. Clothilda to Miss Brandon.  The poor girl had no one to whom she could confide her griefs, no one to tell her that all the disgrace would fall back upon herself.

So she had carried out her plan bravely.  Putting on a very showy costume, so as to attract as much attention as possible, she had spent the day in driving about to all the places where she thought she would meet most of her acquaintances.  Night alone had compelled her to return, and she felt broken to pieces, exhausted, upset by unspeakable anguish of soul, but upheld by the absurd idea that she had done her duty and shown herself worthy of Daniel.

She had just alighted, and was about to pay the coachman, when the count’s valet came up, and said to her in an almost disrespectful tone of voice,—­

“My master has ordered me to tell you to come to him as soon as you should come home.”

“Where is my father?”

“In the large reception-room.”

“Alone?”

“No.  The countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin are with him.”

“Very well.  I am coming.”

Gathering all her courage, and looking whiter and colder than the marble of the statues in the vestibule, she went to the reception-room, opened the door, and entered stiffly.

“Here you are!” exclaimed Count Ville-Handry, restored to a certain degree of calmness by the very excess of his wrath,—­“here you are!”

“Yes, father.”

“Where have you been?”

She had at a glance taken in the whole room; and at the sight of the new countess, and those whom she called her accomplices, all her resentment arose.  She smiled haughtily, and said carelessly,—­