real sorrow comes."

"From me?"

The baroness shook her head in a melancholy way, to convey an idea
of her maternal affection and anxiety.

"Yes, from you, my dear marquis," she replied, "from you alone.
On the very day you entered this house, Cesarine's whole nature
changed."

Having read his letter over, the man in the grand parlor had folded
it, and slipped it into his pocket, and, having left his seat,
seemed to be waiting for something. M. de Tregars was following,
in the glass, his every motion, with the most eager curiosity. And
nevertheless, as he felt the absolute necessity of saying something,
were it only to avoid attracting the attention of the baroness,

"What!" he said, "Mlle. Cesarine's nature did change, then?"

"In one night. Had she not met the hero of whom every girl dreams?
--a man of thirty, bearing one of the oldest names in France."

She stopped, expecting an answer, a word, an exclamation. But, as
M. de Tregars said nothing,

"Did you never notice any thing then?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"And suppose I were to tell you myself, that my poor Cesarine, alas!
--loves you?"

M. de Tregars started. Had he been less occupied with the personage
in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the
conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake;
and, in an icy tone,

"Permit me, madame," he said, "to believe that you are jesting."

"And suppose it were the truth."

"It would make me unhappy in the extreme."

"Sir!"

"For the reason which I have already told you, that I love Mlle.
Gilberte Favoral with the deepest and the purest love, and that
for the past three years she has been, before God, my affianced
bride."

Something like a flash of anger passed over Mme. de Thaller's eyes.

"And I," she exclaimed,--"I tell you that this marriage is senseless."

"I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to
Gilberte how dear she is to me."

Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the
satin of the chair on which she was sitting.

"Then," she went on, "your resolution is settled."

"Irrevocably."

"Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose
M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine's dowry, to treble it?"

An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of
Marius de Tregars.

"Ah! not another word, madame," he interrupted.

There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized