“How?” said the hapless artist, at the height of joy, and too artless to dream of a snare.

“Why, thus,” said she.

Lisbeth could not deprive herself of the savage pleasure of gazing at Wenceslas, who looked up at her with filial affection, the expression really of his love for Hortense, which deluded the old maid.  Seeing in a man’s eyes, for the first time in her life, the blazing torch of passion, she fancied it was for her that it was lighted.

“Monsieur Crevel will back us to the extent of a hundred thousand francs to start in business, if, as he says, you will marry me.  He has queer ideas, has the worthy man.—­Well, what do you say to it?” she added.

The artist, as pale as the dead, looked at his benefactress with a lustreless eye, which plainly spoke his thoughts.  He stood stupefied and open-mouthed.

“I never before was so distinctly told that I am hideous,” said she, with a bitter laugh.

“Mademoiselle,” said Steinbock, “my benefactress can never be ugly in my eyes; I have the greatest affection for you.  But I am not yet thirty, and——­”

“I am forty-three,” said Lisbeth.  “My cousin Adeline is forty-eight, and men are still madly in love with her; but then she is handsome —­she is!”

“Fifteen years between us, mademoiselle!  How could we get on together!  For both our sakes I think we should be wise to think it over.  My gratitude shall be fully equal to your great kindness.—­And your money shall be repaid in a few days.”

“My money!” cried she.  “You treat me as if I were nothing but an unfeeling usurer.”

“Forgive me,” said Wenceslas, “but you remind me of it so often.  —­Well, it is you who have made me; do not crush me.”

“You mean to be rid of me, I can see,” said she, shaking her head.  “Who has endowed you with this strength of ingratitude—­you who are a man of papier-mache?  Have you ceased to trust me—­your good genius? —­me, when I have spent so many nights working for you—­when I have given you every franc I have saved in my lifetime—­when for four years I have shared my bread with you, the bread of a hard-worked woman, and given you all I had, to my very courage.”

“Mademoiselle—­no more, no more!” he cried, kneeling before her with uplifted hands.  “Say not another word!  In three days I will tell you, you shall know all.—­Let me, let me be happy,” and he kissed her hands.  “I love—­and I am loved.”

“Well, well, my child, be happy,” she said, lifting him up.  And she kissed his forehead and hair with the eagerness that a man condemned to death must feel as he lives through the last morning.

“Ah! you are of all creatures the noblest and best!  You are a match for the woman I love,” said the poor artist.