cent costume, in the attitude of
a pretty woman before her mirror. A shorter shadow behind her, Madame
Dobson doubtless, was repairing some accident to the costume, re-tieing
the knot of a ribbon tied about her neck, its long ends floating down to
the flounces of the train. It was all very indistinct, but the woman's
graceful figure was recognizable in those faintly traced outlines, and
Risler tarried long admiring her.

The contrast on the first floor was most striking. There was no light
visible, with the exception of a little lamp shining through the lilac
hangings of the bedroom. Risler noticed that circumstance, and as the
little girl had been ailing a few days before, he felt anxious about
her, remembering Madame Georges's strange agitation when she passed him
so hurriedly in the afternoon; and he retraced his steps as far as Pere
Achille's lodge to inquire.

The lodge was full. Coachmen were warming themselves around the stove,
chatting and laughing amid the smoke from their pipes. When Risler
appeared there was profound silence, a cunning, inquisitive, significant
silence. They had evidently been speaking of him.

"Is the Fromont child still sick?" he asked.

"No, not the child, Monsieur."

"Monsieur Georges sick?"

"Yes, he was taken when he came home to-night. I went right off to
get the doctor. He said that it wouldn't amount to anything--that all
Monsieur needed was rest."

As Risler closed the door Pere Achille added, under his breath, with the
half-fearful, half-audacious insolence of an inferior, who would like to
be listened to and yet not distinctly heard:

"Ah! 'dame', they're not making such a show on the first floor as they
are on the second."

This is what had happened.

Fromont jeune, on returning home during the evening, had found his
wife with such a changed, heartbroken face, that he at once divined a
catastrophe. But he had become so accustomed in the past two years to
sin with impunity that it did not for one moment occur to him that his
wife could have been informed of his conduct. Claire, for her part, to
avoid humiliating him, was generous enough to speak only of Savigny.

"Grandpapa refused," she said.

The miserable man turned frightfully pale.

"I am lost--I am lost!" he muttered two or three times in the wild
accents of fever; and his sleepless nights, a last terrible scene which
he had had with Sidonie, trying to induce her not to give this party
on the eve of his down