Also, a month
later, I must have a special power of attorney to transfer the income
in the Funds. When that stands in my name, you and I have an equal
interest in marrying each other. There it all is, my beautiful aunt,
as plain as day. Between you and me there must be no ambiguity. I can
marry my aunt at the end of a year's widowhood; but I could not marry
a disgraced girl."
He left the room without waiting for an answer. When Vedie came in,
fifteen minutes later, to clear the table, she found her mistress pale
and moist with perspiration, in spite of the season. Flore felt like a
woman who had fallen to the bottom of a precipice; the future loomed
black before her; and on its blackness, in the far distance, were
shapes of monstrous things, indistinctly perceptible, and terrifying.
She felt the damp chill of vaults, instinctive fear of the man crushed
her; and yet a voice cried in her ear that she deserved to have him
for her master. She was helpless against her fate. Flore Brazier had
had a room of her own in Rouget's house; but Madame Rouget belonged to
her husband, and was now deprived of the free-will of a
servant-mistress. In the horrible situation in which she now found
herself, the hope of having a child came into her mind; but she soon
recognized its impossibility. The marriage was to Jean-Jacques what
the second marriage of Louis XII. was to that king. The incessant
watchfulness of a man like Philippe, who had nothing to do and never
quitted his post of observation, made any form of vengeance impossible.
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