alver as it passed,
brought her a glass of bordeaux with the zeal of a mother, an
impresario, a lover. Slander, slander, ineffaceable stain! Now Jenkins'
attentions seemed overdone to the provincial. He thought that there was
something affected, studied in them, and at the same time he fancied
that he noticed in the thanks she expressed to her husband in a low
tone a dread, a submissiveness derogatory to the dignity of a lawful
wife, happy and proud in an unassailable position. "Why, society is a
hideous thing!" said de Gery to himself in dismay, his hands as cold as
ice. The smiles that encompassed him seemed to him like mere grimacing.
He was ashamed and disgusted. Then suddenly his soul rose in revolt:
"Nonsense! it isn't possible!" And, as if in answer to that
exclamation, the voice of slander behind him continued carelessly:
"After all, you know, I am not sure. I simply repeat what I hear. Look,
there's Baronne Hemerlingue. He has all Paris here, this Jenkins."

The baroness came forward on the doctor's arm; he had rushed forward to
meet her, and, despite his perfect control over his features, he seemed
a little perturbed and disconcerted. It had occurred to the excellent
Jenkins to take advantage of his party to make peace between his friend
Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, his two wealthiest patients, who
embarrassed him seriously with their internecine warfare. The Nabob
asked nothing better. He bore his former chum no malice. Their rupture
had come about as a result of Hemerlingue's marriage with one of the
favorites of the former bey. "A woman's row, in fact," said Jansoulet;
and he would be very glad to see the end of it, for any sort of
ill-feeling was burdensome to that exuberant nature. But it seemed that
the baron was not anxious for a reconciliation; for, notwithstanding
the promise he had given Jenkins, his wife appeared alone, to the
Irishman's great chagrin.

She was a tall, thin, fragile personage, with eyebrows like a bird's
feathers, a youthful, frightened manner, thirty years striving to seem
twenty, with a head-dress of grasses and grain drooping over jet black
hair thickly strewn with diamonds. With her long lashes falling over
white cheeks of the wax-like tint of women who have lived long in the
seclusion of a cloister, a little embarrassed in her Parisian garb, she
bore less resemblance to a former occupant of a harem than to a nun who
had renounced her vows and returned to the world. A