, indifferent and inimical, as Ramel
said, and who were looking about ready at any moment to sneer and to
hiss.

She recovered, by an effort that swelled her heart, strength to show
nothing of the feeling of indignant rebellion that was stifling her.

She closed her eyes.

Marianne Kayser passed onward, losing herself with Simon and De Rosas in
the human furrow that opened before her and immediately closed upon her,
and followed by a murmur of admiration.

Adrienne had not however seen the pale, insolent countenance of the
young woman so closely approach her suffering and disconsolate face.
Above all, she had not seen the jealous, rapid glance that flashed
unconsciously in Vaudrey's eyes when he saw Jose de Rosas triumphantly
following the imperious Marianne. Ah! that look of sorrowful anger would
have penetrated like a red-hot iron into Adrienne's soul. That glance
that Guy caught a glimpse of told eloquently of wounded love and bruised
vanity on the part of that man who, placed here between these two women,
his mistress and the other, suffered less from the sorrow caused to
Adrienne than from Marianne's treason in deserting him for this
Spaniard.

Lissac was exasperated. He felt prompted to rush between Marianne and
Rosas and say to him:

"You are mad to accompany this woman! Mad and ridiculous! She is
deceiving you as she has deceived Vaudrey, as she has deceived me, and
as she will deceive everybody."

He purposely placed himself in Mademoiselle Kayser's way. She had
appeared scarcely to recognize him and had brushed against him without
apparent emotion, but with a disdainful pout. Her arm had sought that
of Rosas, as if she now were sure of her duke.

Guy too, felt that he could not cause a scene at the ball, for this
would have brought a scandal on Vaudrey. He had just before repeated to
Adrienne: "Courage." This was now his own watchword, and yet he sought
out Jouvenet to whisper to the Prefect of Police what he thought of his
conduct. Jouvenet had come and gone. Granet, as if he had divined
Lissac's preoccupation, looked at him sneeringly as he whispered to the
fat Molina who was seated near him:

"Alkibiades!"

The soiree, moreover, was terribly wearisome to Lissac. He wandered from
group to group to find some one with whom to exchange ideas but he
hardly found anyone besides Denis Ramel. The same political commonplaces
retailed everywhere, at Madame Gerson's or at Madame Marsy's, as in the
corrid