a grace and refinement in her mourning dress which
told that she was a happy widow; Lucien fancied that this coquetry was
aimed in some degree at him, and he was right; but, like an ogre, he had
tasted flesh, and all that evening he vacillated between Coralie's warm,
voluptuous beauty and the dried-up, haughty, cruel Louise. He could not
make up his mind to sacrifice the actress to the great lady; and Mme.
de Bargeton--all the old feeling reviving in her at the sight of Lucien,
Lucien's beauty, Lucien's cleverness--was waiting and expecting that
sacrifice all evening; and after all her insinuating speeches and her
fascinations, she had her trouble for her pains. She left the room with
a fixed determination to be revenged.

"Well, dear Lucien," she had said, and in her kindness there was both
generosity and Parisian grace; "well, dear Lucien, so you, that were to
have been my pride, took me for your first victim; and I forgave you, my
dear, for I felt that in such a revenge there was a trace of love still
left."

With that speech, and the queenly way in which it was uttered, Mme.
de Bargeton recovered her position. Lucien, convinced that he was a
thousand times in the right, felt that he had been put in the wrong. Not
one word of the causes of the rupture! not one syllable of the terrible
farewell letter! A woman of the world has a wonderful genius for
diminishing her faults by laughing at them; she can obliterate them all
with a smile or a question of feigned surprise, and she knows this.
She remembers nothing, she can explain everything; she is amazed, asks
questions, comments, amplifies, and quarrels with you, till in the end
her sins disappear like stains on the application of a little soap and
water; black as ink you knew them to be; and lo! in a moment, you behold
immaculate white innocence, and lucky are you if you do not find that
you yourself have sinned in some way beyond redemption.

In a moment old illusions regained their power over Lucien and
Louise; they talked like friends, as before; but when the lady, with a
hesitating sigh, put the question, "Are you happy?" Lucien was not ready
with a prompt, decided answer; he was intoxicated with gratified vanity;
Coralie, who (let us admit it) had made life easy for him, had turned
his head. A melancholy "No" would have made his fortune, but he must
needs begin to explain his position with regard to Coralie. He said that
he was loved for his own sake; he said a