t of affection for such a mean wretch, I could give him reasons
that would renew his passion!--But I leave you, monsieur, to your
doubts, which will become remorse.--Wenceslas, my gown!"

She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the glass, and
finished dressing without heeding the Baron, as calmly as if she had
been alone in the room.

"Wenceslas, are you ready?--Go first."

She had been watching Montes in the glass and out of the corner of
her eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an indication of the
weakness which delivers a strong man over to a woman's fascinations; she
now took his hand, going so close to him that he could not help inhaling
the terrible perfumes which men love, and by which they intoxicate
themselves; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked at him
reproachfully.

"You have my full permission to go and tell your history to Monsieur
Crevel; he will never believe you. I have a perfect right to marry him,
and he becomes my husband the day after to-morrow.--I shall make him
very happy.--Good-bye; try to forget me."

"Oh! Valerie," cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, "that is
impossible!--Come to Brazil!"

Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave.

"Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will be your wife;
but your expression at this moment strikes me as very suspicious."

"I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends threw this
girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the outcome of chance!"
said Montes.

"Then I am to forgive you?" she asked, with a smile.

"But you will marry, all the same?" asked the Baron, in an agony of
jealousy.

"Eighty thousand francs a year!" said she, with almost comical
enthusiasm. "And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!"

"Ah! I understand," said Montes.

"Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understanding," said she.

And she departed triumphant.

"I have no scruples," thought the Baron, standing transfixed for a few
minutes. "What! That woman believes she can make use of his passion to
be quit of that dolt, as she counted on Marneffe's decease!--I shall be
the instrument of divine wrath."

Two days later those of du Tillet's guests who had demolished Madame
Marneffe tooth and nail, were seated round her table an hour after she
has shed her skin and changed her name for the illustrious name of
a Paris mayor. This verbal treason is one of the commonest for