! suppose they are
your children; I am their father, and, though I am not adored as
they are, I have the right to request that my house be not made
uninhabitable!"

While Monsieur de l'Estorade, striding about the room, delivered himself
of this philippic, the countess made a despairing sign to Monsieur de
Camps, as if to ask him whether he did not see most alarming symptoms in
such a scene. In order to cut short the quarrel of which he had been the
involuntary cause, the latter said, as if hurried,--

"Come, let us go!"

"Yes," replied Monsieur de l'Estorade, passing out first and neglecting
to say good-bye to his wife.

"Ah! stay; I have forgotten a message my wife gave me," said Monsieur
de Camps, turning back to Madame de l'Estorade. "She told me to say she
would come for you at two o'clock to go and see the spring things at the
'Jean de Paris,' and she has arranged that after that we shall all four
go to the flower-show. When we leave Rastignac, l'Estorade and I will
come back here, and wait for you if you have not returned before us."

Madame de l'Estorade paid little attention to this programme, for a
flash of light had illumined her mind. As soon as she was alone, she
took Marie-Gaston's letter from her gown, and, finding it folded in the
proper manner, she exclaimed,--

"Not a doubt of it! I remember perfectly that I folded it with the
writing outside, as I put it back into the envelope; he must have read
it!"

An hour later, Madame de l'Estorade and Madame de Camps met in the same
salon where they had talked of Sallenauve a few days earlier.

"Good heavens! what is the matter with you?" cried Madame de Camps,
seeing tears on the face of her friend, who was finishing a letter she
had written.

Madame de l'Estorade told her all that had happened, and showed her
Marie-Gaston's letter.

"Are you very sure," asked Madame de Camps, "that your husband has read
the luckless scrawl?"

"How can I doubt it?" returned Madame de l'Estorade. "The paper can't
have turned of itself; besides, in recalling the circumstances, I have a
dim recollection that at the moment when I started to run to Rene I felt
something drop,--fate willed that I should not stop to pick it up."

"Often, when people strain their memories in that way they fasten on
some false indication."

"But, my dear friend, the extraordinary change in the face and behavior
of Monsieur de l'Estorade, coming so suddenly as it did, must have
been the