e joke again?
It will be for them to reflect whether it is worth risking a sword
thrust for. I address myself to you because you are a calm-minded
fellow, who can hinder matters from coming to painful extremities, and
also because you were my second."

Boisrenard undertook the commission. Du Roy went out on business, and
returned an hour later. No one called him Forestier.

When he reached home he heard ladies' voices in the drawing-room, and
asked, "Who is there?"

"Madame Walter and Madame de Marelle," replied the servant.

His heart beat fast for a moment, and then he said to himself, "Well,
let's see," and opened the door.

Clotilde was beside the fireplace, full in a ray of light from the
window. It seemed to George that she grew slightly paler on perceiving
him. Having first bowed to Madame Walter and her two daughters, seated
like two sentinels on each side of their mother, he turned towards his
late mistress. She held out her hand, and he took it and pressed it
meaningly, as though to say, "I still love you." She responded to this
pressure.

He inquired: "How have you been during the century that has elapsed
since our last meeting?"

She replied with perfect ease: "Quite well; and you, Pretty-boy?" and
turning to Madeleine, added: "You will allow me to call him Pretty-boy
still?"

"Certainly, dear; I will allow whatever you please."

A shade of irony seemed hidden in these words.

Madame Walter spoke of an entertainment that was going to be given by

Jacques Rival at his residence, a grand assault-at-arms, at which ladies
of fashion were to be present, saying: "It will be very interesting. But
I am so vexed we have no one to take us there, my husband being obliged
to be away at that time."

Du Roy at once offered his services. She accepted, saying: "My daughters
and I will be very much obliged to you."

He looked at the younger daughter, and thought: "She is not at all bad
looking, this little Susan; not at all." She resembled a fair, fragile

doll, too short but slender, with a small waist and fairly developed
hips and bust, a face like a miniature, grayish-blue, enamel-like eyes,
which seemed shaded by a careful yet fanciful painter, a polished,
colorless skin, too white and too smooth, and fluffy, curly hair, in a
charming aureola, like, indeed the hair of the pretty and expensive
dolls we see in the arms of children much smaller than their plaything.

The elder sister, Rose, was ugly, dull