Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me
with an affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to be
a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment
wholly misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere
imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about,
and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always
reading. We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house."

"Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to a great ball given
by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and
you say right--how I did envy you, that night!"

"From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous. He
reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a mauvais sujet
like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits. It was then
that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me by her
maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies.

"But to proceed. In the flush of my high spirits, and in the insolence
of magnificent ease with which I paid De N------ the trifle I owed him,
something he said made my heart stand still."

"I told him that the money received had come from Jacques de Mauleon,
and that I was going down to his house that day to thank him. He
replied, 'Don't go; it did not come from him.' 'It must; see
the post-mark of the envelope,--Fontainebleau.' 'I posted it at
Fontainebleau.' 'You sent me the money, you!' 'Nay, that is beyond my
means. Where it came from,' said this miserable, 'much more may yet
come;' and then be narrated, with that cynicism so in vogue at Paris,
how he had told the Duchesse (who knew him as my intimate associate)
of my stress of circumstance, of his fear that I meditated something
desperate; how she gave him the jewels to sell and to substitute; how,
in order to baffle my suspicion and frustrate my scruples, he had
gone to Fontainebleau and there posted the envelope containing the
bank-notes, out of which he secured for himself the payment he deemed
otherwise imperilled. De N. having made this confession, hurried down
the stairs swiftly enough to save himself a descent by the window. Do
you believe me still?"

"Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self,
I believe you implicitly."

"Of course I did what any man would do; I wrote a hasty letter to the
Duchesse, stating all my gratitu