f it. On a bench,
beneath the branches of a weeping ash, sat Conti, talking with Camille
Maupin.

XV. CONTI

The inward and convulsive trembling of the marquise was more apparent
than she wished it to be; a tragic drama developed at that moment in the
souls of all present.

"You did not expect me so soon, I fancy," said Conti, offering his arm
to Beatrix.

The marquise could not avoid dropping Calyste's arm and taking that of
Conti. This ignoble transit, imperiously demanded, so dishonoring to
the new love, overwhelmed Calyste who threw himself on the bench beside
Camille, after exchanging the coldest of salutations with his rival.
He was torn by conflicting emotions. Strong in the thought that Beatrix
loved him, he wanted at first to fling himself upon Conti and tell him
that Beatrix was his; but the violent trembling of the woman betraying
how she suffered--for she had really paid the penalty of her faults in
that one moment--affected him so deeply that he was dumb, struck like
her with a sense of some implacable necessity.

Madame de Rochefide and Conti passed in front of the seat where Calyste
had dropped beside Camille, and as she passed, the marquise looked at
Camille, giving her one of those terrible glances in which women have
the art of saying all things. She avoided the eyes of Calyste and turned
her attention to Conti, who appeared to be jesting with her.

"What will they say to each other?" Calyste asked of Camille.

"Dear child, you don't know as yet the terrible rights which an
extinguished love still gives to a man over a woman. Beatrix could not
refuse to take his arm. He is, no doubt, joking her about her new love;
he must have guessed it from your attitudes and the manner in which you
approached us."

"Joking her!" cried the impetuous youth, starting up.

"Be calm," said Camille, "or you will lose the last chances that remain
to you. If he wounds her self-love, she will crush him like a worm under
her foot. But he is too astute for that; he will manage her with greater
cleverness. He will seem not even to suppose that the proud Madame
de Rochefide could betray him; _she_ could never be guilty of such
depravity as loving a man for the sake of his beauty. He will represent
you to her as a child ambitious to have a marquise in love with him, and
to make himself the arbiter of the fate of two women. In short, he will
fire a broadside of malicious insinuations. Beatrix will then be forced