The surgical operation performed upon him was unsuccessful; the strange growth increased.

Sensitive, fearful, and morose, he would not go to Europe to be known as the hunchback husband of Lajeunesse, the great singer.

He dreaded the hour when Madelinette and he should meet again.

A thousand times he pictured her as turning from him in loathing and contempt.

He had married her because he loved her, but he knew well enough that ten thousand other men could love her just as well, and be something more than a deformed Seigneur of an obscure manor in Quebec.
As his gloomy imagination pictured the future, when Madelinette should return and see him as he was and cease to love him--to build up his Seigneurial honour to an undue importance, to give his position a fictitious splendour, became a mania with him.