hen, let the minister wait, for my sake; it will flatter me."

"That is impossible, madam."

She assumed a very dry tone:

"But, that is really strange! What! you are not more anxious to be
agreeable to me?"

"Madam," I replied rather dryly in my turn, "I should be extremely anxious
to be agreeable to you, but I am not at all anxious to help you win your
wager."

I threw out that insinuation somewhat at random, resting it upon some
recollections and some slight indications which you may have been able to
collect here and there in the course of my narrative. Nevertheless, I had
hit it exactly. Madame de Palme blushed up to her ear, stammered out two
or three words which I failed to catch, and left the room, having lost all
countenance.

This precipitate retreat left me quite confused myself. I cannot admit
that we should carry out our respect for the weaker sex so far as to lend
ourselves to every caprice and every enterprise it may please a woman to
direct against our peace or our dignity; but our right of legitimate
self-defense in such encounters is circumscribed within narrow and
delicate limits, which I feared I had over-stepped. It was enough that
Madame de Palme should be alone in the world, and without any other
protection than her sex, to make it seem extremely painful to me to have
thoughtlessly yielded to the irritation, just though it might be, which
her impertinent insistence had aroused. As I was endeavoring to establish
between our respective wrongs a balance that might serve to quiet my
scruples, there was another knock at the library-door. This time, it was
Madame de Malouet who came in. She was much moved.

"Do tell me what has taken place," she said.

I gave her full and minute particulars of my interview with Madame de
Palme, and, while expressing much regret at my vivacity, I added that the
lady's conduct toward me was inexplicable; that she had taken me twice
within twenty-four hours for the subject of her wagers, and that it was a
great deal too much attention, on her part, for a man who asked her, as a
sole favor, not to trouble herself about him any more than he troubled
himself about her.

"Mon Dieu!" said the kind marquise, "I have no fault to find with you. I
have been able to appreciate with my own eyes, during the past few days,
your conduct and her own. But all this is very disagreeable. That child
has just thrown herself in my arms weeping terribly. She says you have
treated her