, with a glance at the marquise, which will show her how much you
regret not staying."

When the three actors met in the salon, and this comedy was played,
Calyste felt for a moment his equivocal position, and the glance that he
cast on Beatrix was far more expressive than Felicite expected. Beatrix
had dressed herself charmingly.

"What a bewitching toilet, my dearest!" said Camille, when Calyste had
departed.

These manoeuvres lasted six days, during which time many conversations,
into which Camille Maupin put all her ability, took place, unknown
to Calyste, between herself and the marquise. They were like the
preliminaries of a duel between two women,--a duel without truce, in
which the assault was made on both sides with snares, feints, false
generosities, deceitful confessions, crafty confidences, by which
one hid and the other bared her love; and in which the sharp steel of
Camille's treacherous words entered the heart of her friend, and left
its poison there. Beatrix at last took offence at what she thought
Camille's distrust; she considered it out of place between them. At the
same time she was enchanted to find the great writer a victim to the
pettiness of her sex, and she resolved to enjoy the pleasure of showing
her where her greatness ended, and how even she could be humiliated.

"My dear, what is to be the excuse to-day for Monsieur du Guenic's not
dining with us?" she asked, looking maliciously at her friend. "Monday
you said we had engagements; Tuesday the dinner was poor; Wednesday you
were afraid his mother would be angry; Thursday you wanted to take a
walk with me; and yesterday you simply dismissed him without a reason.
To-day I shall have my way, and I mean that he shall stay."

"Already, my dear!" said Camille, with cutting irony. The marquise
blushed. "Stay, Monsieur du Guenic," said Camille, in the tone of a
queen.

Beatrix became cold and hard, contradictory in tone, epigrammatic, and
almost rude to Calyste, whom Felicite sent home to play _mouche_ with
Charlotte de Kergarouet.

"_She_ is not dangerous at any rate," said Beatrix, sarcastically.

Young lovers are like hungry men; kitchen odors will not appease their
hunger; they think too much of what is coming to care for the means
that bring it. As Calyste walked back to Guerande, his soul was full
of Beatrix; he paid no heed to the profound feminine cleverness which
Felicite was displaying on his behalf. During this week the marquise