ss after the manner
of any abandoned layman drinking a toast.

"Madame," he said, "I drink to the hearts you have broken. And now I go
to arrange the card tables, for your guests will soon be coming."

It was, in fact, Madame de Chantonnay's Thursday evening to which were
bidden such friends as enjoyed for the moment her fickle good graces.
The Abbe Touvent was, so to speak, a permanent subscriber to these
favours. The task was easy enough, and any endowed with a patience to
listen, a readiness to admire that excellent young nobleman, Albert de
Chantonnay, and the credulity necessary to listen to the record (more
hinted at than clearly spoken) of Madame's own charms in her youth,
could make sure of a game of dominoes on the evening of the third
Thursday in the month.

The Abbe bustled about, drawing cards and tables nearer to the lamps,
away from the draught of the door, not too near the open wood fire. His
movements were dainty, like those of an old maid of the last generation.
He hissed through his teeth as if he were working very hard. It served
to stimulate a healthy excitement in the Thursday evening of Madame de
Chantonnay.

"Oh, I am not uneasy," said that lady, as she watched him. She had dined
well and her digestion had outlived those charms to which she made
such frequent reference. "I am not uneasy. He will return, more or less
sheepish. He will make some excuse more or less inadequate. He will tell
us a story more or less creditable. Allez! Oh, you men. If you intend
that chair for Monsieur de Gemosac, it is the wrong one. Monsieur de
Gemosac sits high, but his legs are short; give him the little chair
that creaks. If he sits too high he is apt to see over the top of one's
cards. And he is so eager to win--the good Marquis."

"Then he will come to-night despite the cold? You think he will come,
Madame?"

"I am sure of it. He has come more frequently since Juliette came to
live at the chateau. It is Juliette who makes him come, perhaps. Who
knows?"

The Abbe stopped midway across the floor and set down the chair he
carried with great caution.

"Madame is incorrigible," he said, spreading out his hands. "Madame
would perceive a romance in a cradle."

"Well, one must begin somewhere, Materialist. Once it was for me that
the guests crowded to my poor Thursdays. But now it is because Albert
is near. Ah! I know it. I say it without jealousy. Have you noticed, my
dear Abbe, that he has cut his whiskers