high spirits, and saw
the future through rosy glasses, and exclaimed in a loud voice: "I think
I have turned up trumps, by George!"

* * * * *

The Countess Regina de Villegby was lying on the sofa in her boudoir,
languidly fanning herself. She had only received three or four intimate
friends that day, Saint Mars Montalvin, Tom Sheffield, and his cousin,
Madame de Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings.
It was growing dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the
Avenue of the Champs-Elysees sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There
was a delicate perfume of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in
yet, and chatting and laughing filled the room with a confused noise.

"Would you pour out the tea?" the Countess said, suddenly, touching
Saint Mars' fingers, who was beginning an amorous conversation in a low
voice, with her fan. And while he slowly filled the little china cup, he
continued: "Are the Montefiores as good as the lying newspapers make
out?"

Then Tom Sheffield and the others all joined in.

They had never seen anything like it, they declared; it was most
exciting, and made one shiver unpleasantly, like when the _espada_
comes to close quarters with the infuriated brute at a bull fight.

Countess Regina listened in silence, and nibbled the petals of a tea
rose.

"How I should like to see them!" giddy Madame de Rhouel exclaimed.

"Unfortunately, cousin," the Countess said, in the solemn tones of a
preacher, "a respectable woman dare not let herself be seen in improper
places."

They all agreeing with her, nevertheless, Madame de Villegby was present
at the Montefiores' performance two days later, dressed all in black,
and wearing a thick veil, at the back of a stage box.

And that woman was as cold as a steel buckler, and had married as soon
as she left the convent in which she had been to school, without any
affection or even liking for her husband, whom the most skeptical
respected as a saint, and who had a look of virgin purity on her calm
face as she went down the steps of the Madeleine on Sundays, after high
mass.

Countess Regina stretched herself nervously, grew pale, and trembled
like the strings of a violin, on which an artist had been playing some
wild symphony, and inhaled the nasty smell of the sawdust, as if it had
been the perfume of a bouquet of unknown flowers, and clenched her
hands, and gazed eagerly at the two mounte