lf.
"How is it that he has come back again? Who compels her to keep me?
Where is the sense of this sort of thing?"

Rosanette was still sobbing. She remained all the time stretched at the
edge of the divan, with her right cheek resting on her two hands, and
she seemed a being so dainty, so free from self-consciousness, and so
sorely troubled, that he drew closer to her and softly kissed her on the
forehead.

Thereupon she gave him assurances of her affection for him; the Prince
had just left her, they would be free. But she was for the time being
short of money. "You saw yourself that this was so, the other day, when
I was trying to turn my old linings to use." No more equipages now! And
this was not all; the upholsterer was threatening to resume possession
of the bedroom and the large drawing-room furniture. She did not know
what to do.

Frederick had a mind to answer:

"Don't annoy yourself about it. I will pay."

But the lady knew how to lie. Experience had enlightened her. He
confined himself to mere expressions of sympathy.

Rosanette's fears were not vain. It was necessary to give up the
furniture and to quit the handsome apartment in the Rue Drouot. She took
another on the Boulevard Poissonniere, on the fourth floor.

The curiosities of her old boudoir were quite sufficient to give to the
three rooms a coquettish air. There were Chinese blinds, a tent on the
terrace, and in the drawing-room a second-hand carpet still perfectly
new, with ottomans covered with pink silk. Frederick had contributed
largely to these purchases. He had felt the joy of a newly-married man
who possesses at last a house of his own, a wife of his own--and, being
much pleased with the place, he used to sleep there nearly every
evening.

One morning, as he was passing out through the anteroom, he saw, on the
third floor, on the staircase, the shako of a National Guard who was
ascending it. Where in the world was he going?

Frederick waited. The man continued his progress up the stairs, with his
head slightly bent down. He raised his eyes. It was my lord Arnoux!

The situation was clear. They both reddened simultaneously, overcome by
a feeling of embarrassment common to both.

Arnoux was the first to find a way out of the difficulty.

"She is better--isn't that so?" as if Rosanette were ill, and he had
come to learn how she was.

Frederick took advantage of this opening.

"Yes, certainly! at least, so I was told by her maid,"