or of the
drawing-room, announcing:

"Monsieur Crevel."

On hearing the name, singularly appropriate to the figure of the man
who bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age,
rose as if she had received an electric shock.

"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she
said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at
her mother's side.

After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went
out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who
looked older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.

"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's
ear, without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness
had dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.

The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy
demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of
which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a
little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw
hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the
old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes,
made, it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have
hesitated to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she
looked exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave
the room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel,
to which that gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.

"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said
he.

"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.

"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.

"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."

"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain,
bowing again to Madame Hulot.

He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at Elmire--when
a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to emphasize
its meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.

"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more
conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this room,"
said Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment
was arranged, served as a cardroom.

It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the
garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for
she thoug