s self-control by a powerful effort,
he preceded Madame de Fondege through the magnificent apartments of
the mansion, lightly saying: "My wife is in her boudoir. She will be
delighted to see you. But first of all, I have a good secret to confide
to you. So let me take this young lady to the baroness, and you and
I can join them in a moment!" Thereupon, without waiting for any
rejoinder, he took Marguerite's arm and led her toward the end of the
hall. Then opening a door, he exclaimed in a mocking voice: "Madame
Trigault, allow me to present to you the daughter of the Count de
Chalusse." And adding in a whisper: "This is your mother, young girl,"
he pushed the astonished Marguerite into the room, closed the door, and
returned to Madame de Fondege.

Paler than her white muslin wrapper, the Baroness Trigault sprang from
her chair. This was the woman who, while her husband was braving death
to win fortune for her, had been dazzled by the Count de Chalusse's
wealth, and who, later in life, when she was the richest of the rich,
had sunk into the very depths of degradation--had stooped, indeed, to
a Coralth! The baroness had once been marvellously beautiful, and even
now, many murmurs of admiration greeted her when she dashed through
the Champs Elysees in her magnificent equipage, attired in one of those
eccentric costumes which she alone dared to wear. She was a type of the
wife created by the customs of fashionable society; the woman who feels
elated when her name appears in the newspapers and in the chronicles of
Parisian "high life"; who has no thought of her deserted fireside, but
is ever tormented by a terrible thirst for bustle and excitement; whose
head is empty, and whose heart is dry--the woman who only exists for
the world; and who is devoured by unappeasable covetousness, and who, at
times, envies an actress's liberty, and the notoriety of the leaders of
the demi-monde; the woman who is always in quest of fresh excitement,
and fails to find it; the woman who is blase, and prematurely old in
mind and body, and who yet still clings despairingly to her fleeting
youth.

Inaccessible to any emotion but vanity, the baroness had never shed a
tear over her husband's sufferings. She was sure of her absolute power
over him. What did the rest matter? She even gloried in her knowledge
that she could make this man--who loved her in spite of everything--at
one moment furious with rage or wild with grief, and then an instant
af