, who flattered
her, and seemed ready to yield to her guidance, had become dearer to
the eccentric Cousin Lisbeth than all her relations.

The Baron, on his part, admiring in Madame Marneffe such propriety,
education, and breeding as neither Jenny Cadine nor Josepha, nor any
friend of theirs had to show, had fallen in love with her in a month,
developing a senile passion, a senseless passion, which had an
appearance of reason. In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor
the orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the
scorn of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had
brought him to grief alike with the actress and the singer. He was
spared, too, the rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst of
dry sand.

Madame Marneffe, of whom he had made a friend and confidante, made the
greatest difficulties over accepting any gift from him.

"Appointments, official presents, anything you can extract from the
Government; but do not begin by insulting a woman whom you profess to
love," said Valerie. "If you do, I shall cease to believe you--and I
like to believe you," she added, with a glance like Saint Theresa
leering at heaven.

Every time he made her a present there was a fortress to be stormed, a
conscience to be over-persuaded. The hapless Baron laid deep
stratagems to offer her some trifle--costly, nevertheless--proud of
having at last met with virtue and the realization of his dreams. In
this primitive household, as he assured himself, he was the god as
much as in his own. And Monsieur Marneffe seemed at a thousand leagues
from suspecting that the Jupiter of his office intended to descend on
his wife in a shower of gold; he was his august chief's humblest
slave.

Madame Marneffe, twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful
middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know
nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron
could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the
charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to
the utmost--all along the line, as the saying goes.

The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it
is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the
secret of the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock
and Hortense Hulot. Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who
hesitates long before becoming his mistress, there are con