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Lyons, like most rich provincial towns, was very purse-proud, and this characteristic was already quite apparent in its young daughters at the Convent. Their conversation consisted, to a great extent, in boastings about their fathers’ incomes, and surmises as to those of the fathers of their companions. They could tell you the exact number of gold pieces carried on each girl’s back, and when some one appeared in a new dress they would come up and finger the material to ascertain its texture and richness. Every one knew exactly how many pairs of Spanish gloves, how many yards of Venetian lace, how many pure silk petticoats were possessed by every one else, and how many Turkey carpets and Rouen tapestries and tables of marble and porphyry, how much gold and silver plate, and how many beds covered with gold brocade were to be found in each other’s homes.

As Madeleine’s dresses were made of mere serge, and contemptible guese was their only trimming, and as it was known that her father was nothing but a disreputable attorney, they coldly ignored her, and this made her life in the Convent agonising. Although subconsciously she was registering every ridiculous or vulgar detail about her passive tormentors, yet her boundless admiration for them remained quite intact, and to be accepted as one of their select little coterie, to share their giggling secrets, to walk arm in arm with one of them in the Convent garden would be, she felt, the summit of earthly glory.