h and smiling, in the white ruffles of her trailing morning-gown
and her little lace cap, she continued to discuss her menu, inhaling
the cool air that rose from the fields and the river. There was not the
slightest trace of chagrin or anxiety upon that tranquil face, which
was a striking contrast to the lover's features, distorted by a night of
agony and fatigue.

For a long quarter of an hour Frantz, sitting in a corner of the salon,
saw all the conventional dishes of a bourgeois dinner pass before him
in their regular order, from the little hot pates, the sole Normande
and the innumerable ingredients of which that dish is composed, to the
Montreuil peaches and Fontainebleau grapes.

At last, when they were alone and he was able to speak, he asked in a
hollow voice:

"Didn't you receive my letter?"

"Why, yes, of course."

She had risen to go to the mirror and adjust a little curl or two
entangled with her floating ribbons, and continued, looking at herself
all the while:

"Yes, I received your letter. Indeed, I was charmed to receive it.
Now, should you ever feel inclined to tell your brother any of the
vile stories about me that you have threatened me with, I could easily
satisfy him that the only source of your lying tale-bearing was anger
with me for repulsing a criminal passion as it deserved. Consider
yourself warned, my dear boy--and au revoir."

As pleased as an actress who has just delivered a telling speech with
fine effect, she passed him and left the room smiling, with a little
curl at the corners of her mouth, triumphant and without anger. And he
did not kill her!

CHAPTER XVII. AN ITEM OF NEWS

In the evening preceding that ill-omened day, a few moments after Frantz
had stealthily left his room on Rue de Braque, the illustrious Delobelle
returned home, with downcast face and that air of lassitude and
disillusionment with which he always met untoward events.

"Oh! mon Dieu, my poor man, what has happened?" instantly inquired
Madame Delobelle, whom twenty years of exaggerated dramatic pantomime
had not yet surfeited.

Before replying, the ex-actor, who never failed to precede his most
trivial words with some facial play, learned long before for stage
purposes, dropped his lower lip, in token of disgust and loathing, as if
he had just swallowed something very bitter.

"The matter is that those Rislers are certainly ingrates or egotists,
and, beyond all question, exceedingly ill-bred. D