ent can disconcert. Having
ventured every thing, they expect every thing. Such was the Baron
de Thaller. With a sagacious glance he examined his wife and M. de
Tregars; and in a cordial tone,

"We are quarreling here?" he said.

"I am glad you have come!" exclaimed the baroness.

"What is the matter?"

"The matter is, that M. de Tregars is endeavoring to take an odious
advantage of some incidents of our past life."

"There's woman's exaggeration for you!" he said laughing.

And, holding out his hand to Marius,

"Let me make your peace--for you, my dear marquis," he said: "that's
within the province of the husband." But, instead of taking his
extended hand, M. de Tregars stepped back.

"There is no more peace possible, sir, I am an enemy."

"An enemy!" he repeated in a tone of surprise which was wonderfully
well assumed, if it was not real.

"Yes," interrupted the baroness; "and I must speak to you at once,
Frederic. Come: M. de Tregars will wait for you."

And she led her husband into the adjoining room, not without first
casting upon Marius a look of burning and triumphant hatred.

Left alone, M. de Tregars sat down. Far from annoying him, this
sudden intervention of the manager of the Mutual Credit seemed to
him a stroke of fortune. It spared him an explanation more painful
still than the first, and the unpleasant necessity of having to
confound a villain by proving his infamy to him.

"And besides," he thought, "when the husband and the wife have
consulted with each other, they will acknowledge that they cannot
resist, and that it is best to surrender." The deliberation was
brief. In less than ten minutes, M. de Thaller returned alone. He was
pale; and his face expressed well the grief of an honest man who
discovers too late that he has misplaced his confidence.

"My wife has told me all, sir," he began.

M. de Tregars had risen. "Well?" he asked.

"You see me distressed. Ah, M. le Marquis! how could I ever expect
such a thing from you?--you, whom I thought I had the right to look
upon as a friend. And it is you, who, when a great misfortune
befalls me, attempts to give me the finishing stroke. It is you who
would crush me under the weight of slanders gathered in the gutter."

M. de Tregars stopped him with a gesture.

"Mme. de Thaller cannot have correctly repeated my words to you,
else you would not utter that word 'slander.'"

"She has repeated them to me without the least cha