es, her heartbreaks, her
deceptions, all her sorrows of an ambitious woman, which had made her
the daring woman that she was,--those boulevards, those paths about the
Lake, those proscenium boxes at the theatre, she would see them in her
triumph, as she had seen them in her untrammelled follies or in the
moments of her ruin and abandonment.

"Two days more! One day more," she said. "After the first
representation at the Varietes, we will leave, are you willing?"

"Ah! you Parisienne! Hungry Parisienne!" Jose replied.

She looked at him with her gray eyes sparkling, and smiling.

"The Varietes?--Don't you know the old rondel?--The one you hummed when
you were sick, you know?--It seems to me that I can hear it yet:

Do you see yonder
That white house,
Where every Sunday
Under the sweet lilacs--"

Uncle Kayser, ever prudent, advised a speedy departure. He feared he
scarcely knew what. He feared everything, "like Abner, and feared only
that." Every morning he dreaded seeing some indiscreet articles in the
papers respecting the Duke and the Duchesse de Rosas.

"These journalists disregard, without scruple, the wall of private life!
It is a moral wall, however!"

At last, they would leave in two days, so it was determined. Rosas had
wished to see Guy again for the last time. At Rue d'Aumale they informed
him that Monsieur de Lissac was travelling. The shutters of the
apartment were not, however, closed. The duke had for a moment been
tempted to insist on entering; then he withdrew and returned home
without analyzing too closely the feeling of annoyance that came over
him. The weather was splendid and dry. He returned on foot to Avenue
Montaigne, where he expected to find Marianne superintending her trunks.

On entering the house, the doors of which were open, as at the hour of
packing and removing, giving the whole house the appearance of neglect
and flight, he was astonished to hear a man's voice, which was neither
that of Simon Kayser nor that of the valet, and evidently answering in a
violent tone the equally evident angry voice of Marianne.

He did not know this voice, and the noise of a bell-rope hastily pulled,
in a fit of manifest anger, made him quicken his steps, as if he
instinctively felt that the duchess was in danger.

In the shadow of a dull December evening, the house, with its disordered
appearance that resembled a sacking, assumed a sinister aspect. Jose
suddenly felt a sentiment