complexion and Parisian eyes. She knew how to laugh,
understood a little too much, perhaps, and seemed to the male guests the
only woman in the party. Her success completed Georges's intoxication;
but as his advances became more pronounced, she showed more and more
reserve. Thereupon he determined that she should be his wife. He swore it
to himself, with the exaggerated emphasis of weak characters, who seem
always to combat beforehand the difficulties to which they know that they
must yield some day.

It was the happiest moment of little Chebe's life. Even aside from any
ambitious project, her coquettish, false nature found a strange
fascination in this intrigue, carried on mysteriously amid banquets and
merry-makings.

No one about them suspected anything. Claire was at that healthy and
delightful period of youth when the mind, only partly open, clings to the
things it knows with blind confidence, in complete ignorance of treachery
and falsehood. M. Fromont thought of nothing but his business. His wife
polished her jewels with frenzied energy. Only old Gardinois and his
little, gimlet-like eyes were to be feared; but Sidonie entertained him,
and even if he had discovered anything, he was not the man to interfere
with her future.

Her hour of triumph was near, when a sudden, unforeseen disaster blasted
her hopes.

One Sunday morning M. Fromont was brought back fatally wounded from a
hunting expedition. A bullet intended for a deer had pierced his temple.
The chateau was turned upside-down.

All the hunters, among them the unknown bungler that had fired the fatal
shot, started in haste for Paris. Claire, frantic with grief, entered the
room where her father lay on his deathbed, there to remain; and Risler,
being advised of the catastrophe, came to take Sidonie home.

On the night before her departure she had a final meeting with Georges at
The Phantom,--a farewell meeting, painful and stealthy, and made solemn
by the proximity of death. They vowed, however, to love each other
always; they agreed upon a method of writing to each other. Then they
parted.

It was a sad journey home.

Sidonie returned abruptly to her every-day life, escorted by the
despairing grief of Risler, to whom his dear master's death was an
irreparable loss. On her arrival, she was compelled to describe her visit
to the smallest detail; discuss the inmates of the chateau, the guests,
the entertainments, the dinners, and the final catastroph