And now, which of the two, the mother or the watch-dog, had the right
of it?
None of the persons who were about Modeste could understand that
maiden heart--for the soul and the face we have described were in
harmony. The girl had transported her existence into another world, as
much denied and disbelieved in in these days of ours as the new world
of Christopher Columbus in the sixteenth century. Happily, she kept
her own counsel, or they would have thought her crazy. But first we
must explain the influence of the past upon her nature.
Two events had formed the soul and developed the mind of this young
girl. Monsieur and Madame Mignon, warned by the fate that overtook
Bettina, had resolved, just before the failure, to marry Modeste. They
chose the son of a rich banker, formerly of Hamburg, but established
in Havre since 1815,--a man, moreover, who was under obligations to
them. The young man, whose name was Francois Althor, the dandy of
Havre, blessed with a certain vulgar beauty in which the middle
classes delight, well-made, well-fleshed, and with a fine complexion,
abandoned his betrothed so hastily on the day of her father's failure
that neither Modeste nor her mother nor either of the Dumays had seen
him since.
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