day wind up by leaving his skin behind. That's his business, but what right has he to risk my bones as well?"
It might be thought indeed that the Count was seeking occasions to do himself an injury. With what trouble could he be afflicted thus to despise the life which two loving women strove to render sweet and bright for him?
The Countess and Blandine were just now passing through agonies even more painful than before. The poor, old grandmother hoped, by gratifying his most expensive whims, to reconcile him to existence, but at the rate he was going he would, in the end, ruin himself both in health and fortune. "What will become of him when I am no more?" the good woman wondered. "He will have need, indeed, of a loving and prudent companion, a woman of good management, a guardian angel of profound and absolute devotion."
Out of respect for certain prejudices still remaining, Madame de Kehlmark would not go so far as to recommend marriage to those whom she called her two children, but all the same, she would not in any way have dissuaded them from it. When she was
