in his presence, and he knew that, having been married at the age of
seventeen, she must now be thirty-four and that since her marriage
she had passed a cloistered existence with her husband and her
mother-in-law. In society some spoke of her as a woman of religious
chastity, while others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming
bursts of laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days
prior to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had recently
died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made him one of
those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the most prudent
among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only retained a vague
recollection; they had dined not wisely but too well that evening, and
when he saw the countess, in her black dress and with her quiet smile,
seated in that Old World drawing room, he certainly had his doubts. A
lamp which had been placed behind her threw into clear relief her dark,
delicate, plump side face, wherein a certain heaviness in the contours
of the mouth alone indicated a species of imperious sensuality.

"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. "One's ready to
kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to come!"

Fauchery questioned him abruptly.

"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"

"Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken aback
and quite forgetting his pose. "Where d'you think we are?"

After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa, he
added:

"Gad! I say no! But I don't know much about it. There's a little chap
out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with everywhere
and at every turn. One's seen faster men than that, though, you bet.
However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I know is that if the
countess indulges in high jinks she's still pretty sly about it, for the
thing never gets about--nobody talks."

Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he told
him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of the ladies,
which still continued in front of the hearth, they both spoke in subdued
tones, and, seeing them there with their white cravats and gloves, one
might