o heavy tears rolled from
his eyes and completely deceived Sabine.

"Monsieur," she said, sitting up in bed and looking angrily at
Dommanget, "Monsieur du Guenic can lose thirty, fifty, a hundred
thousand francs if it pleases him, without any one having a right to
think it wrong or read him a lesson. It is far better that Monsieur
de Trailles should win his money than that we should win Monsieur de
Trailles'."

Calyste rose, took his wife round the neck, kissed her on both cheeks
and whispered:--

"Sabine, you are an angel!"

Two days later the young wife was thought to be out of danger, and the
next day Calyste was at Madame de Rochefide's making a merit of his
infamy.

"Beatrix," he said, "you owe me happiness. I have sacrificed my poor
little wife to you; she has discovered all. That fatal paper on which
you made me write, bore your name and your coronet, which I never
noticed--I saw but you! Fortunately the 'B' was by chance effaced. But
the perfume you left upon me and the lies in which I involved myself
like a fool have betrayed my happiness. Sabine nearly died of it; her
milk went to the head; erysipelas set in, and possibly she may bear the
marks for the rest of her days."

As Beatrix listened to this tirade her face was due North, icy enough to
freeze the Seine had she looked at it.

"So much the better," she said; "perhaps it will whiten her for you."

And Beatrix, now become as hard as her bones, sharp as her voice, harsh
as her complexion, continued a series of atrocious sarcasms in the same
tone. There is no greater blunder than for a man to talk of his wife, if
she is virtuous, to his mistress, unless it be to talk of his mistress,
if she is beautiful, to his wife. But Calyste had not received that
species of Parisian education which we must call the politeness of the
passions. He knew neither how to lie to his wife, nor how to tell his
mistress the truth,--two apprenticeships a man in his position must make
in order to manage women. He was therefore compelled to employ all the
power of passion to obtain from Beatrix a pardon which she forced him to
solicit for two hours; a pardon refused by an injured angel who raised
her eyes to the ceiling that she might not see the guilty man, and who
put forth reasons sacred to marquises in a voice quivering with tears
which were furtively wiped with the lace of her handkerchief.

"To speak to me of your wife on the very day after my fall!" she cried.
"Why