f there!"

"You will never forgive me?"

"You know little of women, my friend, if you do not know that jealousy is
one of the crimes they not only pardon but love."

"My God, I am not jealous!"

"Call it yourself what you will, but station yourself there!"

"And you are sincere in wishing me to do so?"

"I pray you to do so! Retire in the interval, leave the door open, and
when you hear Monsieur de Camors enter the court of the hotel, return."

"No!" said the General, after a moment's hesitation; "since I have gone
so far"--and he sighed deeply "I do not wish to leave myself the least
pretext for distrust. If I leave you before he comes, I am capable of
fancying--"

"That I might secretly warn him? Nothing more natural. Remain here, then.
Only take a book; for our conversation, under such circumstances, can not
be lively."

He sat down.

"But," he said, "what mystery can there be between you two?"

"You shall hear!" she said, with her sphinx-like smile.

The General mechanically took up a book. She stirred the fire, and
reflected. As she liked terror, danger, and dramatic incidents to blend
with her intrigues, she should have been content; for at that moment
shame, ruin, and death were at her door. But, to tell the truth, it was
too much for her; and when she looked, in the midst of the silence which
surrounded her, at the true character and scope of the perils which
surrounded her, she thought her brain would fail and her heart break.

She was not mistaken as to the origin of the letter. This shameful work
had indeed been planned by Madame de la Roche-Jugan. To do her justice,
she had not suspected the force of the blow she was dealing. She still
believed in the virtue of the Marquise; but during the perpetual
surveillance she had never relaxed, she could not fail to see the changed
nature of the intercourse between Camors and the Marquise. It must not be
forgotten that she dreamed of securing for her son Sigismund the
succession to her old friend; and she foresaw a dangerous rivalry--the
germ of which she sought to destroy. To awaken the distrust of the
General toward Camors, so as to cause his doors to be closed against him,
was all she meditated. But her anonymous letter, like most villainies of
this kind, was a more fatal and murderous weapon than its base author
imagined.

The young Marquise, then, mused while stirring the fire, casting, from
time to time, a furtive glance at the clock.

M. de C