CHAPTER XIII.
One morning in November, Denise was giving her first orders in the department when the Baudus' servant came to tell her that Mademoiselle Geneviève had passed a very bad night, and wished to see her cousin immediately. For some time the young girl had been getting weaker and weaker, and she had been obliged to take to her bed two days before.
"Say I am coming at once," replied Denise, very anxious.
The blow which was finishing Geneviève was Colomban's sudden disappearance. At first, chaffed by Clara, he had stopped out several nights; then, yielding to the mad desires of a quiet, chaste fellow, he had become her obedient slave, and had not returned one Monday, but had simply sent a farewell letter to Baudu, written in the studied terms of a man about to commit suicide. Per
