ready I believe that I should regret
nothing. No, I assure you, nothing whatever."

She, too, might have desired,--as Vaudrey did formerly--to leave the
soiree, to be with her husband again, and she thought that Sulpice found
it necessary to remain longer, since he had not definitely decided on
going away.

The new salon that he entered, communicated with a smaller, circular
one, hung with Japanese silk draperies, and lighted by a Venetian
chandelier that cast a subdued light over the divans upon which some of
the guests sat chatting. Sulpice immediately divined, as if by instinct,
that Marianne was there. He went straight in that direction, and as he
entered the doorway, through the opening framed by two pale blue
portieres, he saw in front of him, sitting side by side, the pretty girl
and the Duc de Rosas to whom she had listened so attentively, almost
devotedly, a little earlier; he recalled this now.

The light fell directly on Mademoiselle Kayser's shoulders and played
over her fair hair. The duke was looking at her.

Vaudrey took but a single step forward.

He experienced an altogether curious and inexplicable sensation. This
tete-a-tete displeased him.

At that moment, on half-turning round,--perhaps by chance--she perceived
the minister and greeting him with a sweet smile, she rose and beckoned
to him to approach her.

The sky-blue satin hangings, on which the light fell, seemed like a
natural framework for the beautiful blonde creature.

"Your Excellency," she said, "permit me to introduce my friend, the Duc
de Rosas, he is too accomplished not to appreciate eloquence and he
entertains the greatest admiration for you."

Rosas had risen in his turn, and greeted the minister with a very
peculiar half-inclination, not as a suitor in the presence of a powerful
man, but as a nobleman greeting a man of talent.

Vaudrey sought to discover an agreeable word in the remarks of this man
but he failed to do so. He had, nevertheless, just before applauded
Rosas's remarks, either out of condescension or from politeness. But it
seemed to him that here the duke was no longer the same man. He gave him
the impression of an intruder who had thrust himself in the way that led
to some possible opportunity. He nevertheless concealed all trace of the
ill-humor that he himself could not define or explain, and ended by
uttering a commonplace phrase in praise of the duke, but which really
meant nothing.

As he was about to