His word so frank, but so stupid, altered the whole in an instant; Matilda, sure to be loved, despised him perfectly.

She was walking with him at the moment of this awkward and she left him, and his last glance expressed the most awful contempt. Back in the living room, all night it looked over. The next day it was in contempt all his heart he was no longer the movement that, for eight days, he had found much pleasure in treating Julien as the closest friend, was unfriendly to him his sight. The sensation of Mathilde soon to disgust; nothing can express the intensity of the contempt she felt on meeting him before his eyes.

Julien did not understand everything that had happened in the heart of Matilda, but his vanity clairvoyant discerned contempt. He had the good sense not to appear before it as rarely as possible, and never looked.