it. The carriages that had been shut up in the
carriage-house for two years, and were dusted once a week because
the spiders spun their webs on the silk cushions, were placed at her
disposal. The horses were harnessed three times a day, and the gate was
continually turning on its hinges. Everybody in the house followed this
impulse of worldliness. The gardener paid more attention to his flowers
because Madame Risler selected the finest ones to wear in her hair at
dinner. And then there were calls to be made. Luncheon parties were
given, gatherings at which Madame Fromont Jeune presided, but at which
Sidonie, with her lively manners, shone supreme. Indeed, Claire often
left her a clear field. The child had its hours for sleeping and riding
out, with which no amusements could interfere. The mother was compelled
to remain away, and it often happened that she was unable to go with
Sidonie to meet the partners when they came from Paris at night.

"You will make my excuses," she would say, as the went up to her room.

Madame Risler was triumphant. A picture of elegant indolence, she would
drive away behind the galloping horses, unconscious of the swiftness of
their pace, without a thought in her mind.

Other carriages were always waiting at the station. Two or three times
she heard some one near her whisper, "That is Madame Fromont Jeune,"
and, indeed, it was a simple matter for people to make the mistake,
seeing the three return together from the station, Sidonie sitting
beside Georges on the back seat, laughing and talking with him, and
Risler facing them, smiling contentedly with his broad hands spread flat
upon his knees, but evidently feeling a little out of place in that fine
carriage. The thought that she was taken for Madame Fromont made her
very proud, and she became a little more accustomed to it every day. On
their arrival at the chateau, the two families separated until dinner;
but, in the presence of his wife sitting tranquilly beside the sleeping
child, Georges Fromont, too young to be absorbed by the joys of
domesticity, was continually thinking of the brilliant Sidonie, whose
voice he could hear pouring forth triumphant roulades under the trees in
the garden.

While the whole chateau was thus transformed in obedience to the whims
of a young woman, old Gardinois continued to lead the narrow life of
a discontented, idle, impotent 'parvenu'. The most successful means of
distraction he had discovered was espion