"And what would you have!" said Lissac, who on this evening heard
everything that he ought not to hear, "it is as good as being from the
_Moulin-Rouge_!"

Madame Gerson smiled, thought the expression charming, very apt, very
happy, but again reflected that Lissac was exceedingly considerate
toward Adrienne and that Madame Vaudrey was a little too indulgent
toward Monsieur de Lissac.

V

Since the moment when it had entered her mind that she might find
something more than a lover in Monsieur de Rosas, Marianne had been
sorely puzzled. She was playing a strong hand. Between the minister and
the duke she must make a choice.

She did not care seriously for Vaudrey. In fact she found that he was
ridiculously unreserved. "He is a simple fellow!" she said to Claire
Dujarrier. But she had sufficient _amour-propre_ to retain him, and she
felt assured that Sulpice was weak enough to obey her in everything:
such an individual was not to be disdained. As to Rosas, she felt a
sentiment which certainly was not love, but rather a feeling of
astonishment, a peculiar affection. Rosas held her in respect, and she
was flattered by his timid bearing, as he had in his veins the blood of
heroes. He spoke almost entirely of his love, which, however, he never
proposed to her to test, and this platonic course, which in Vaudrey's
case she would have considered _simple_, appeared to her to be "good
form" in the great nobleman's case. The duke raised her in her own
eyes.

He had never repeated that word, doubtless spoken by him at random:
marriage, and Marianne was too discreet and shrewd to appear to have
specially noticed it. She did not even allude to it. She waited
patiently. With the lapse of time, she thought, Rosas would be the more
surely in her grasp. Meantime it was necessary to live and as she was
bent on maintaining her household, she kept Vaudrey, whom she might need
at any moment.

Her part was to carry on these two intrigues simultaneously, leading
Rosas to believe that the minister was her friend only, nothing more,
the patron of Uncle Kayser, and making Vaudrey think that since she had
dismissed the duke he had become resigned and would "suppress his
sighs." She could have sworn, in all sincerity, that Jose was not her
lover.

To mislead Vaudrey was not a very difficult task. Sulpice was literally
blinded by this love.--For a moment, he had been aroused by Jouvenet's
intimation that his secret was known to ot