."

In response to her husband's astounded, bewildered expression she
continues:

"Why, yes, this is my day. Madame Fromont has one; I can have one also, I
fancy."

"Of course, of course," said honest Risler, looking about with some
little uneasiness. "So that's why I saw so many flowers everywhere, on
the landing and in the drawing-room."

"Yes, my maid went down to the garden this morning. Did I do wrong? Oh!
you don't say so, but I'm sure you think I did wrong. 'Dame'! I thought
the flowers in the garden belonged to us as much as to the Fromonts."

"Certainly they do--but you--it would have been better perhaps--"

"To ask leave? That's it-to humble myself again for a few paltry
chrysanthemums and two or three bits of green. Besides, I didn't make any
secret of taking the flowers; and when she comes up a little later--"

"Is she coming? Ah! that's very kind of her."

Sidonie turned upon him indignantly.

"What's that? Kind of her? Upon my word, if she doesn't come, it would be
the last straw. When I go every Wednesday to be bored to death in her
salon with a crowd of affected, simpering women!"

She did not say that those same Wednesdays of Madame Fromont's were very
useful to her, that they were like a weekly journal of fashion, one of
those composite little publications in which you are told how to enter
and to leave a room, how to bow, how to place flowers in a jardiniere and
cigars in a case, to say nothing of the engravings, the procession of
graceful, faultlessly attired men and women, and the names of the best
modistes. Nor did Sidonie add that she had entreated all those friends of
Claire's, of whom she spoke so scornfully, to come to see her on her own
day, and that the day was selected by them.

Will they come? Will Madame Fromont Jeune insult Madame Risler Aine by
absenting herself on her first Friday? The thought makes her almost
feverish with anxiety.

"For heaven's sake, hurry!" she says again and again. "Good heavens! how
long you are at your, breakfast!"

It is a fact that it is one of honest Risler's ways to eat slowly, and to
light his pipe at the table while he sips his coffee. To-day he must
renounce these cherished habits, must leave the pipe in its case because
of the smoke, and, as soon as he has swallowed the last mouthful, run
hastily and dress, for his wife insists that he must come up during the
afternoon and pay his respects to the ladies.

What a sensation in the factory w