e. If a few reluctant signs
appeared on her face they only proved the ease with which certain women
can bury the better feelings of their souls, and the cruel dissimulation
which enables them to smile sweetly while planning the destruction of
a victim. She sat alone after Corentin had left her, thinking how she
could get the marquis still living into her toils. For the first time
in her life this woman had lived according to her inmost desires; but
of that life nothing remained but one craving,--that of
vengeance,--vengeance complete and infinite. It was her one thought,
her sole desire. Francine's words and attentions were unnoticed. Marie
seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open; and the long day passed
without an action or even a gesture that bore testimony to her thoughts.
She lay on a couch which she had made of chairs and pillows. It was late
in the evening when a few words escaped her, as if involuntarily.

"My child," she said to Francine, "I understood yesterday what it was to
live for love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance. Yes,
I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him, seduce
him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to despise me,
at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my lackey and my
slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I shall not be
myself."

The house which Corentin now hired for Mademoiselle de Verneuil offered
many gratifications to the innate love of luxury and elegance that was
part of this girl. The capricious creature took possession of it with
regal composure, as of a thing which already belonged to her; she
appropriated the furniture and arranged it with intuitive sympathy, as
though she had known it all her life. This is a vulgar detail, but one
that is not unimportant in sketching the character of so exceptional a
person. She seemed to have been already familiarized in a dream with the
house in which she now lived on her hatred as she might have lived on
her love.

"At least," she said to herself, "I did not rouse insulting pity in him;
I do not owe him my life. Oh, my first, my last, my only love! what an
end to it!" She sprang upon Francine, who was terrified. "Do you love a
man? Oh, yes, yes, I remember; you do. I am glad I have a woman here who
can understand me. Ah, my poor Francette, man is a miserable being. Ha!
he said he loved me, and his love could not bear the slightest test!
But I,--if all me