re not sorry of an
opportunity to repay the young Marquise de Sairmeuse for the disdain and
the caustic words of Blanche de Courtornieu.

Soon all the guests, who had so eagerly presented themselves that
morning, had disappeared, and there remained only one old gentleman who,
on account of his gout, had deemed it prudent not to mingle with the
crowd.

He bowed in passing before the young marquise, and blushing at this
insult to a woman, he departed as the others had done.

Blanche was now alone. There was no longer any necessity for constraint.
There were no more curious witnesses to enjoy her sufferings and to make
comment upon them. With a furious gesture she tore her bridal veil and
the wreath of orange flowers from her head, and trampled them under
foot.

A servant was passing through the hall; she stopped him.

"Extinguish the lights everywhere!" she ordered, with an angry stamp
of her foot as if she had been in her own father's house, and not at
Sairmeuse.

He obeyed her, and then, with flashing eyes and dishevelled hair, she
hastened to the little salon in which the _denouement_ had taken place.

A crowd of servants surrounded the marquis, who was lying like one
stricken with apoplexy.

"All the blood in his body has flown to his head," remarked the duke,
with a shrug of his shoulders.

For the duke was furious with his former friends.

He scarcely knew with whom he was most angry, Martial or the Marquis de
Courtornieu.

Martial, by this public confession, had certainly imperilled, if he had
not ruined, their political future.

But, on the other hand, had not the Marquis de Courtornieu represented
a Sairmeuse as being guilty of an act of treason revolting to any
honorable heart?

Buried in a large arm-chair, he sat watching, with contracted brows, the
movements of the servants, when his daughter-in-law entered the room.

She paused before him, and with arms folded tightly across her breast,
she said, angrily:

"Why did you remain here while I was left alone to endure such
humiliation? Ah! had I been a man! All our guests have fled,
Monsieur--all!"

M. de Sairmeuse sprang up.

"Ah, well! what if they have? Let them go to the devil!"

Of the guests that had just left his house there was not one whom the
duke really regretted--not one whom he regarded as an equal. In giving
a marriage-feast for his son, he had bidden all the gentry of the
neighborhood. They had come--very well! They had fled