Happening to see Modeste over the wall at the foot of the lawn, he turned away his head.

Six weeks later he married the eldest Mademoiselle Vilquin.

In this way Modeste, young, beautiful, and of high birth, learned the lesson that for three whole months of her engagement she had been nothing more than Mademoiselle Million.

Her poverty, well known to all, became a sentinel defending the approaches to the Chalet fully as well as the prudence of the Latournelles or the vigilance of Dumay.

The talk of the town ran for a time on Mademoiselle Mignon's position only to insult her.
"Poor girl! what will become of her ?--an old maid, of course." "What a fate! to have had the world at her feet; to have had the chance to marry Francisque Althor,--and now, nobody willing to take her!" "After a life of luxury, to come down to such poverty--" And these insults were not uttered in secret or left to Modeste's imagination; she heard them spoken more than once by the young men and the young women of Havre as they walked to Ingouville, and, knowing that Madame Mignon and her daughter lived at the Chalet, talked of them as they passed the house.