Two men, the
Marquis de Valorsay and M. de Fondege's son, coveted her hand; and
one of the two, the marquis, so she believed, was capable of any
crime. Still she felt no fears. She had been in danger once
before when she was little more than a child, when the brother of
her employer insulted her with his attentions, but she had escaped
unharmed.
Deceit was certainly most repugnant to her truth-loving nature;
but it was the only weapon of defence she possessed. And so on
the following day she carefully studied the abode of her
entertainers. And certainly the study was instructive. The
General's household was truly Parisian in character; or, at least,
it was what a Parisian household inevitably becomes when its
inmates fall a prey to the constantly increasing passion for
luxury and display, to the furore for aping the habits and
expenditure of millionaires, and to the noble and elevated desire
of humiliating and outshining their neighbors. Ease, health, and
comfort had been unscrupulously sacrificed to show. The dining-
room was magnificent, the drawing-room superb; but these were the
only comfortably furnished apartments in the establishment. The
other rooms were bare and desolate. It is true that Madame de
Fondege had a handsome wardrobe with glass doors in her own room,
but this was an article which the friend of the fashionable
Baroness Trigault could not possibly dispense with.
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