d keep watch on her and
Rochebriant also.

Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant. That young
noble's too obvious pride of race had nettled him, not the less that the
financier himself was vain of his ancestry. Perhaps he still disliked
Alain, but the dislike was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile,
interest; and if he became connected with the race, the pride in it
might grow contagious.

They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came up to claim
his promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the same as
usual, not more cordial, not less ceremoniously distant. A man so able
as the financier cannot be without quick knowledge of the human heart.

"If disposed to fall in love with Valerie," thought Duplessis, "he would
have taken more pains to please her father. Well, thank heaven, there
are better matches to be found for her than a noble without fortune and
a Legitimist without career."

In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than for any other pretty girl
in the room. In talking with the Vicomte de Braze in the intervals of
the dance, he had made some passing remark on her beauty. De Braze had
said, "Yes, she is charming; I will present you," and hastened to do so
before Rochebriant even learned her name. So introduced, he could but
invite her to give him her first disengaged dance, and when that was
fixed, he had retired, without entering into conversation.

Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that effort
of speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure; and of course, he began
with the first commonplace which presented itself to his mind.

"Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, Mademoiselle?"

"Yes," dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie's rosy lips.

"And not over-crowded, as most balls are?"

Valerie's lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly. The
obligations of the figure now caused a pause. Alain racked his brains
and began,

"They tell me the last season was more than usually gay; of that I
cannot judge, for it was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the
first time."

Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than her childlike
face had yet shown, and said, this time distinctly, "This is my first
ball, Monsieur le Marquis."

"One has only to look at Mademoiselle to divine that fact," replied
Alain, gallantly.

Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance; but the ice between
the two was no