ve your soul in pledge. I should never be happy again if you
were false to Hortense--here she is! not another word! I will settle the
matter."

"Kiss Lisbeth, my darling," said Wenceslas to his wife. "She will help
us out of our difficulties by lending us her savings."

And he gave Lisbeth a look which she understood.

"Then, I hope you mean to work, my dear treasure," said Hortense.

"Yes, indeed," said the artist. "I will begin to-morrow."

"To-morrow is our ruin!" said his wife, with a smile.

"Now, my dear child! say yourself whether some hindrance has not come in
the way every day; some obstacle or business?"

"Yes, very true, my love."

"Here!" cried Steinbock, striking his brow, "here I have swarms of
ideas! I mean to astonish all my enemies. I am going to design a service
in the German style of the sixteenth century; the romantic style:
foliage twined with insects, sleeping children, newly invented monsters,
chimeras--real chimeras, such as we dream of!--I see it all! It will be
undercut, light, and yet crowded. Chanor was quite amazed.--And I wanted
some encouragement, for the last article on Montcornet's monument had
been crushing."

At a moment in the course of the day when Lisbeth and Wenceslas were
left together, the artist agreed to go on the morrow to see Madame
Marneffe--he either would win his wife's consent, or he would go without
telling her.

Valerie, informed the same evening of this success, insisted that Hulot
should go to invite Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Steinbock to dinner;
for she was beginning to tyrannize over him as women of that type
tyrannize over old men, who trot round town, and go to make interest
with every one who is necessary to the interests or the vanity of their
task-mistress.

Next evening Valerie armed herself for conquest by making such a toilet
as a Frenchwoman can devise when she wishes to make the most of herself.
She studied her appearance in this great work as a man going out to
fight a duel practises his feints and lunges. Not a speck, not a wrinkle
was to be seen. Valerie was at her whitest, her softest, her sweetest.
And certain little "patches" attracted the eye.

It is commonly supposed that the patch of the eighteenth century is out
of date or out of fashion; that is a mistake. In these days women, more
ingenious perhaps than of yore, invite a glance through the opera-glass
by other audacious devices. One is the first to hit on a rosette in
her