was amid all this gay animation that the company
separated after exchanging all sorts of embraces and handshakes.

Once in the brougham, Constance spoke but seldom to Charlotte, taking
as a pretext a violent headache which the prolonged lunch had increased.
With a weary air and her eyes half closed she began to reflect. After
Rose's death, and when little Christophe likewise had been carried off,
a revival of hope had come to her, for all at once she had felt quite
young again. But when she consulted Boutan on the matter he dealt her
a final blow by informing her that her hopes were quite illusive. Thus,
for two months now, her rage and despair had been increasing. That very
morning at that christening, and now in that carriage beside that young
woman who was again expecting to become a mother, it was this which
poisoned her mind, filled her with jealousy and spite, and rendered
her capable of any evil deed. The loss of her son, the childlessness
to which she was condemned, all threw her into a state of morbid
perversity, fraught with dreams of some monstrous vengeance which she
dared not even confess to herself. She accused the whole world of being
in league to crush her. Her husband was the most cowardly and idiotic
of traitors, for he betrayed her by letting some fresh part of the works
pass day by day into the hands of that fellow Blaise, whose wife no
sooner lost a child than she had another. She, Constance, was enraged
also at seeing her husband so gay and happy, since she had left him
to his own base courses. He still retained his air of victorious
superiority, declaring that he had remained unchanged, and there
was truth in this; for though, instead of being an active master as
formerly, he now too often showed himself a senile prowler, on the high
road to paralysis, he yet continued to be a practical egotist, one who
drew from life the greatest sum of enjoyment possible. He was following
his destined road, and if he took to Blaise it was simply because he
was delighted to have found an intelligent, hard-working young man who
spared him all the cares and worries that were too heavy for his weary
shoulders, while still earning for him the money which he needed for
his pleasures. Constance knew that something in the way of a partnership
arrangement was about to be concluded. Indeed, her husband must have
already received a large sum to enable him to make good certain losses
and expenses which he had hidden from her