lain; but I have
divined all. I can read your heart. I am sure that you love him."

"Of whom do you speak?" replied Antoinette, whose colour rose in her
cheeks.

"Of a most charming man, who, either through inconceivable stupidity,
or through most criminal calculation, neglected to tell us that he was
married."

And with these words, Mlle. Moiseney extended both arms, that she
might receive into them Mlle. Moriaz, whom she believed to be already
swooning.

Mlle. Moriaz did not swoon. She flushed crimson, then grew very pale;
but she remained standing, her head proudly erect, and she said, in a
tone of well-feigned indifference: "Oh! M. Larinski is married? My very
sincere compliments to the Countess Larinski."

After which she busied herself arranging in a vase the heather and ferns
she had brought back with her. Mlle. Moiseney stood lost in astonishment
at her calm; she gazed in a stupor at her, and suddenly exclaimed:
"Thank God! you do not love him! Your father has mistaken, he often
mistakes; he sometimes gets the strangest ideas into his mind; he was
persuaded that this would be a death-blow to you; he does not know you
at all. Ah! unquestionably, M. Larinski is far from being disagreeable;
I do not dispute his having some merit; but I always thought that there
was something suspicious about him; his manners were a little equivocal;
I suspected him of hiding something from us. As it appears, he has made
a _mesalliance_ that he did not care to acknowledge. It is deplorable
that a man of such excellent address should have low tastes and
doubtful morality. His duty was to tell us all; he was neither loyal nor
delicate."

"You dream, my dear," replied Antoinette. "What law, human or divine,
obliged M. Larinski to tell us everything? Did you expect him to render
an account of his deeds and misdeeds to us as to a tribunal of penance?"

In speaking thus, she took off her hat and mantilla, seated herself in
the embrasure of a window, and opened a book which she began to read
with great attention.

"God be praised! she does not love him," thought Mlle. Moiseney, who
was not aware that Mlle. Moriaz was turning two or three pages at a time
with perceiving it.

Deeply absorbed as she was, she still recognised her father's step as he
came upstairs to his room. She hurried out to meet him. He noticed with
pleasure that her face was not wan, nor were her eyes red. He was less
satisfied when she said, in a calm, clear