it is probably also true that
his wife cared very little about his infidelities. But still she was an
insurmountable obstacle to the fulfilment of Mademoiselle de Guerchi's
hopes, who but for her might have looked forward to one day becoming a
duchess.

For about three weeks, however, at the time we are speaking of, the duke
had neither crossed her threshold nor written. He had told her he was
going for a few days to Normandy, where he had large estates, but had
remained absent so long after the date he had fixed for his return that
she began to feel uneasy. What could be keeping him? Some new flame,
perhaps. The anxiety of the lady was all the more keen, that until now
nothing had passed between them but looks of languor and words of love.
The duke had laid himself and all he possessed at the feet of Angelique,
and Angelique had refused his offer. A too prompt surrender would have
justified the reports so wickedly spread against her; and, made wise by
experience, she was resolved not to compromise her future as she had
compromised her past. But while playing at virtue she had also to play
at disinterestedness, and her pecuniary resources were consequently
almost exhausted. She had proportioned the length of her resistance to
the length of her purse, and now the prolonged absence of her lover
threatened to disturb the equilibrium which she had established between
her virtue and her money. So it happened that the cause of the lovelorn
Duc de Vitry was in great peril just at the moment when de Jars and
Jeannin resolved to approach the fair one anew. She was sitting lost in
thought, pondering in all good faith on the small profit it was to a
woman to be virtuous, when she heard voices in the antechamber. Then her
door opened, and the king's treasurer walked in.

As this interview and those which follow took place in the presence of
witnesses, we are obliged to ask the reader to accompany us for a time to
another part of the same house.

We have said there were several tenants: now the person who occupied the
rooms next to those in which Mademoiselle de Guerchi lived was a
shopkeeper's widow called Rapally, who was owner of one of the thirty-two
houses which then occupied the bridge Saint-Michel. They had all been
constructed at the owner's cost, in return for a lease for ever. The
widow Rapally's avowed age was forty, but those who knew her longest
added another ten years to that: so, to avoid error, let us s