and the title of duke by royal patent.
Now, as the Navarreins had not yet resettled in France, it was sheer
trickery that the young lawyer thus proposed to the old lady by
suggesting to her that she should petition for an estate belonging to
the elder branch of the family.

"Monsieur," said the old woman with deceptive gravity, "bring the
Comtesse de Vaudremont across to me. I promise you that I will reveal
to her the mystery of the interesting unknown. You see, every man in
the room has reached as great a curiosity as your own. All eyes are
involuntarily turned towards the corner where my protegee has so
modestly placed herself; she is reaping all the homage the women wished
to deprive her of. Happy the man she chooses for her partner!" She
interrupted herself, fixing her eyes on Madame de Vaudremont with one of
those looks which plainly say, "We are talking of you."--Then she added,
"I imagine you would rather learn the stranger's name from the lips of
your handsome Countess than from mine."

There was such marked defiance in the Duchess' attitude that Madame de
Vaudremont rose, came up to her, and took the chair Martial placed for
her; then without noticing him she said, "I can guess, madame, that you
are talking of me; but I admit my want of perspicacity; I do not know
whether it is for good or evil."

Madame de Lansac pressed the young woman's pretty hand in her own dry
and wrinkled fingers, and answered in a low, compassionate tone, "Poor
child!"

The women looked at each other. Madame de Vaudremont understood that
Martial was in the way, and dismissed him, saying with an imperious
expression, "Leave us."

The Baron, ill-pleased at seeing the Countess under the spell of the
dangerous sibyl who had drawn her to her side gave one of those looks
which a man can give--potent over a blinded heart, but simply ridiculous
in the eyes of a woman who is beginning to criticise the man who has
attracted her.

"Do you think you can play the Emperor?" said Madame de Vaudremont,
turning three-quarters of her face to fix an ironical sidelong gaze on
the lawyer.

Martial was too much a man of the world, and had too much wit and
acumen, to risk breaking with a woman who was in favor at Court, and
whom the Emperor wished to see married. He counted, too, on the jealousy
he intended to provoke in her as the surest means of discovering the
secret of her coolness, and withdrew all the more willingly, because at
this moment a n