not feel, the appearance of a passion at once
burning and modest, betraying furtive glances and a flush as of
pleasure, when he entered the room.

All the world said:

"Bertha is foolishly fond of her husband."

Sauvresy was sure of it, and he was the first to say, not caring
to conceal his joy:

"My wife adores me."

Such were man and wife at Valfeuillu when Sauvresy found Tremorel
on the banks of the Seine with a pistol in his hand. Sauvresy
missed his dinner that evening for the first time since his marriage,
though he had promised to be prompt, and the meal was kept waiting
for him. Bertha might have been anxious about this delay; she was
only indignant at what she called inconsiderateness. She was asking
herself how she should punish her husband, when, at ten o'clock at
night, the drawing-room door was abruptly thrown open, and Sauvresy
stood smiling upon the threshold.

"Bertha," said he, "I've brought you an apparition."

She scarcely deigned to raise her head. Sauvresy continued:

"An apparition whom you know, of whom I have often spoken to you,
whom you will like because I love him, and because he is my oldest
comrade, my best friend."

And standing aside, he gently pushed Hector into the room.

"Madame Sauvresy, permit me to present to you Monsieur the Count
de Tremorel."

Bertha rose suddenly, blushing, confused, agitated by an indefinable
emotion, as if she saw in reality an apparition. For the first time
in her life she was abashed, and did not dare to raise her large,
clear blue eyes.

"Monsieur," she stammered, "you are welcome."

She knew Tremorel's name well. Sauvresy had often mentioned it,
and she had seen it often in the papers, and had heard it in the
drawing-rooms of all her friends. He who bore it seemed to her,
after what she had heard a great personage. He was, according to
his reputation, a hero of another age, a social Don Quixote, a
terribly fast man of the world. He was one of those men whose lives
astonish common people, whom the well-to-do citizen thinks faithless
and lawless, whose extravagant passions overleap the narrow bounds
of social prejudice; a man who tyrannizes over others, whom all fear,
who fights on the slightest provocation, who scatters gold with a
prodigal hand, whose iron health resists the most terrible excesses.
She had often in her miserable reveries tried to imagine what kind
of man this Count de Tremorel was. She awarded him with such
qualities as