They rarely interfered with her, or
observed her with any discrimination. Their love was content with her
surface of good humor, gayety, and beauty; she was an ever-present
delight and pride to them both, and that she might only partially
reciprocate this fondness never crossed their minds. They did not
realize that during all these eighteen years that they had been caring,
planning, and plotting for her their names had represented nothing in
her mind except unseen, unknown relatives to whom she was indebted for
support, but to whom she also owed what she hated and rebelled
against,--her imprisonment in the convent. Why should she love them?
Blood tells, however; and when Victorine found herself free, and face to
face with the grandfather of whom she had so long heard and only once
seen, and the Aunt Jeanne who had been described to her as the loving
benefactress of her youth, she had a new and affectionate sentiment
towards them. But she would at any minute have calmly sacrificed them
both for the furtherance of her own interests; and the thoughts she was
thinking while Willan Blaycke gazed at her so ardently this night were
precisely as follows:--
"If I could only have a good chance at him, I could make him marry me.
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