r me
with his visits, although on the most intimate and friendly terms with
my husband."

"Talking of your husband, pray is he here to-night?" inquired Sarah.

"No," replied Madame d'Harville, in a tone of embarrassment; "he
preferred remaining at home."

"He seems to me to mix less and less in the world."

"He never liked what is called fashionable gaiety."

The marquise's agitation visibly increased; and Sarah, whose quick eye
easily perceived it, continued:

"The last time I saw him he looked even paler than usual."

"He has been very much out of health lately."

"My dearest Clemence, will you permit me to speak to you without
reserve?"

"Oh, yes, pray do!"

"How comes it that the least allusion to your husband always throws you
into such a state of extraordinary alarm and uneasiness?"

"What an idea! Is it possible you can mean it seriously?" asked poor
Madame d'Harville, trying to smile.

"Indeed, I am quite in earnest," rejoined her companion; "whenever you
are speaking of him, your countenance assumes, even in spite of
yourself,--but how shall I make myself understood?" and Sarah, with the
tone and fixed gaze of one who wished to read the most secret thoughts
of the person she addressed, slowly and emphatically added, "a look of
mingled aversion and fear!"

The fixed pallid features of Madame d'Harville at first defied even
Sarah's practised eye, but her keen gaze soon detected a slight
convulsive working of the mouth, with a tremulous movement of the under
lip of her victim; but feeling it unsafe to pursue the subject farther
at this moment so as to awaken the marquise's mistrust of her friendly
intentions, by way, therefore, of concealing her real suspicions, she
continued:

"Yes, just that sort of dislike any woman would entertain for a peevish,
jealous, ill-tempered--"

At this explanation of the countess's meaning, as regarded Madame
d'Harville's imagined dislike for her husband, a heavy load seemed
taken from her; the working of her lip ceased, and she replied:

"Let me assure you M. d'Harville is neither peevish nor jealous." Then,
as if searching for some means of breaking a conversation so painful to
her feelings, she suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! here comes that tiresome
friend of my husband's, the Duke de Lucenay. I hope he has not seen us.
Where can he have sprung from? I thought he was a thousand miles off!"

"It was reported that he had gone somewhere in the East for a year or
two,