But where was the duke now? Among the Kabyles or the Mormons? At Tahiti,
Greenland, or gone to the devil? The papers had once announced that he
was organizing an expedition to the North Pole. Perhaps he was lost
among the icebergs in the Arctic Seas! She smiled at that, sighing
involuntarily with sincere emotion, but prompted by selfish regret.

It had seemed to her that Jose had more than once permitted himself to
express his affection for her. Politely, correctly, of course, as a
gallant man addresses a friend's mistress, but manifesting in his
reserve a host of understood sentiments and tender restraint that
suggested hidden or implied declarations. Marianne had pretended not to
understand him. At that time, she loved Guy or thought that she loved
him, which amounts to the same thing. She contented herself with smiling
at the flirtation of Monsieur de Rosas.

"I have perhaps been very stupid," she said to herself. "Pshaw! he might
have been as silly as I, if occasion demanded. The obligations of
friendship! The phantom of Guy!"

She suddenly stopped and this name escaped her lips: _Jose_--_Joseph!_

Nevertheless, this was one of the vexations of this girl: she was angry
because she had acted rightly. Others suffer remorse for their ill
deeds, but she suffered for her virtue. She often thought of the Duc de
Rosas, as her mother Eve must have thought of Paradise lost. She would
have stirred, astonished, conquered, crushed Paris, if she had been the
mistress of Rosas.

"What then! Whose fault was it? How foolish of one not to dare
everything!"

Now see how suddenly and unexpectedly, just as an adversary might offer
an opportunity for revenge, chance, at the turning-point of her life,
had brought back to Paris this Jose whom she had never forgotten, and
who perhaps remembered her, and by whom she would be recognized most
assuredly, in any case. It was an unhoped, unlooked-for opportunity that
restored Marianne's faith in herself, superstitious as she was, like all
successful gamblers.

She had fallen, but how she could raise herself by the arms of the duke!
One must be determined.

Guy and Sabine were met on the way, like two helpers. She profited by
this circumstance, using the one to reach the other and to gain Rosas
from the latter. She bore a grudge, nevertheless, against Guy de Lissac,
the insolent and silly fellow who had formerly left her. Bah! before
taking vengeance on him, it was most important to mak