he Rue de
Laval. The Japanese satin enhanced the illusion.

"Do you know that it seems to me," she said, "that I have been dreaming,
and that I am not a whit older?"

"You are not altered, in fact," said Rosas. "I am mistaken--"

"Yes, I know. I have grown lovelier. That is a compliment that I am used
to--Lissac has told me that already, only the other morning."

She bit her lips almost imperceptibly, as if to blame herself for her
imprudence, but had she mentioned Guy's name designedly, she could not
have been better satisfied with the result. Monsieur de Rosas, usually
very pale, became pallid, and a slight curl of his lip, although
immediately suppressed, gave an upward turn to his reddish moustache.

"Ah!" he said, "You still see Guy."

"I!--I had not spoken a single word to him until I asked him to have an
invitation sent me for this soiree, and then it was merely because I
knew you would be here."

"Ah!" said Jose again, without adding a word.

Marianne was satisfied. She knew now that the duke still loved her,
since the mention of Lissac's name had made him tremble. Well! she had
shrewdly understood her Rosas.

"And what have you been doing, my dear duke, for such an age?" she said.

She looked at him as she had looked at Vaudrey, with her sweet and
shrewd smile, which moved him profoundly, and her glance penetrated to
the inmost depths of his being.

"You know the old saying: 'I have lived.' It is great folly, perhaps,
but it is the truth."

"And I wager," boldly said Marianne, "that you have never thought of
me."

"Of you?"

"Of me. Of that mad Marianne, who is the maddest creature of all those
you have met in your travels from the North Pole to Cambodia, but who
has by no means a wicked heart, although a sufficiently unhappy one, and
that has never ceased to beat a little too rapidly at certain
reminiscences which you do not recall, perhaps--who knows?"

"I remember everything," replied the duke in a grave voice.

Marianne looked at him and commenced to laugh.

"Oh! how you say that, _mon Dieu!_ Do you remember I used to call you
Don Carlos? Well, you have just reminded me of Philip II. 'I remember
everything!' B-r-r! what a funereal tone. Our reminiscences are not,
however, very dramatic."

"That depends on the good or ill effects that they cause," said Rosas
very seriously.

"Ah! God forgive me if I have ever willingly done you the least harm, my
dear Rosas. Give me your hand. I have