as
standing up, a little behind her chair, looking at the stage. "That lady
in the blue _glace_ never takes her eyes from our box! She points us out
to the gentleman who is with her--do look!"

I turned my glass in the direction to which she pointed, and recognised
Madame de Marignan!

I turned hot and cold, red and white, all in one moment, and shrank back
like a snail that has been touched, or a sea-anemone at the first dig of
the naturalist.

"Does she know you?" asked Josephine.

"I--I--probably--that is to say--I have met her in society."

"And who is the gentleman?"

That was just what I was wondering. It was not Delaroche. It was no one
whom I had ever seen before. It was a short, fat, pale man, with a bald
head, and a ribbon in his button-hole.

"Is he her husband?" pursued Josephine.

The suggestion flashed upon me like a revelation. Had I not heard that
M. de Marignan was coming home from Algiers? Of course it was he. No
doubt of it. A little vulgar, fat, bald man.... Pshaw, just the sort of
a husband that she deserved!

"How she looks at me!" said Josephine.

I felt myself blush, so to speak, from head to foot.

"Good Heavens! my dear girl," I exclaimed, "take your elbows off the
front of the box!"

Josephine complied, with a pettish little grimace.

"And, for mercy's sake, don't hold your head as if you feared it would
tumble off!"

"It is the flowers," said she. "They tickle the back of my neck,
whenever I move my head. I am much more comfortable in my cap."

"Never mind. Make the best of it, and listen to this song."

It was the great tenor ballad of the evening. The house was profoundly
silent; the first wandering chords of a harp were heard behind the
scenes; and Duprez began. In the very midst of one of his finest and
tenderest _sostenuto_ passages, Josephine sneezed--and such a sneeze!
you might have heard it out in the lobbies. An audible titter ran round
the house. I saw Madame de Marignan cover her face with her
handkerchief, and yield to an irrepressible fit of laughter. As for the
tenor, he cast a withering glance up at the box, and made a marked pause
before resuming his song. Merciful powers! what crime had I committed
that I should be visited with such a punishment as this?

"Wretched girl!" I exclaimed, savagely, "what have you done?"

"Done, _mon ami!_" said Josephine, innocently. "Why, I fear I have taken
cold."

I groaned aloud.

"Taken cold!" I muttered to myself