ushed the bundle of bills between
her fingers.

"And--Monsieur de Rosas?" asked Vaudrey, who was quite pale.

"He?"

Marianne laughed.

"Well, he has gone--I have told you as much. He has, moreover, perhaps,
done wisely. I regretted him momentarily--but, bah! I should have sent
him away--yes, very quickly, just so! without even allowing him to
touch the tips of my fingers."

"Rosas?" repeated the minister, looking keenly into Marianne's eyes.

"Rosas!" she again said, lowering her voice. "And do you know why I
would have done that?"

"No--" answered Sulpice trembling.

"Simply because I no longer loved him, and that I loved another."

She had spoken these last words slowly and in such passionate, vibrating
tones that Sulpice felt himself shudder with delight.

"Ah," he said, as he went toward her, "is that the reason? Truly,
Marianne, is that the reason?"

She had not confessed whom she loved, she had spoken only by her looks.
But Sulpice felt that he belonged to her, he was burning with passion,
transported, insane from this avowal; his hands sought hers and drew her
to him. He clasped her to his bosom, intoxicated by the pressure of this
body against his own, and added in a very low tone while his fingers
alternately wandered over her satiny neck and her silky hair:

"How can I help loving you, Marianne? Is it true, really true? You love
me?--Ah! what the great nobleman has not done, do you think I cannot do?
You are in your own home, you understand, Marianne.--Then, as he touched
the young woman's exquisite ears with his lips, he added:

"Our home--will you have it so?--Our home!--"

He felt, as she remained in his embrace with her body leaning against
his, that she quivered throughout her frame; his lips wandered from her
ear to her cheek and then to her lips, there they rested long in a
ravishing kiss that filled him with the languishing sensation of
swooning, he holding her so tightly that, with a smile, she disengaged
herself, pink with her blushes, and bright-eyed, said, with an
expression of peculiar delight:

"It is sealed now!"

Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a
sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment
of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his
absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take
possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the
possession of th