devil of a
general-secretary?"

"What?"

"I owe thirty-thousand and odd miserable francs,--you will despise me
because it isn't more, but here, I grant you, I am significant. Well,
Baudoyer's uncle has bought up my debts, and is, doubtless, ready to
give me a receipt for them if Baudoyer is appointed."

"But all that is monstrous."

"Not at all; it is monarchical and religious, for the Grand Almoner is
concerned in it. Baudoyer himself must appoint Colleville in return for
ecclesiastical assistance."

"What shall you do?"

"What will you bid me do?" he said, with charming grace, holding out his
hand.

Celestine no longer thought him ugly, nor old, nor white and chilling as
a hoar-frost, nor indeed anything that was odious and offensive, but she
did not give him her hand. At night, in her salon, she would have let
him take it a hundred times, but here, alone and in the morning, the
action seemed too like a promise that might lead her far.

"And they say that statesmen have no hearts!" she cried
enthusiastically, trying to hide the harshness of her refusal under
the grace of her words. "The thought used to terrify me," she added,
assuming an innocent, ingenuous air.

"What a calumny!" cried des Lupeaulx. "Only this week one of the
stiffest of diplomatists, a man who has been in the service ever since
he came to manhood, has married the daughter of an actress, and has
introduced her at the most iron-bound court in Europe as to quarterings
of nobility."

"You will continue to support us?"

"I am to draw up your husband's appointment--But no cheating, remember."

She gave him her hand to kiss, and tapped him on the cheek as she did
so. "You are mine!" she said.

Des Lupeaulx admired the expression.

[That night, at the Opera, the old coxcomb related the incident as
follows: "A woman who did not want to tell a man she would be his,--an
acknowledgment a well-bred woman never allows herself to make,--changed
the words into 'You are mine.' Don't you think the evasion charming?"]

"But you must be my ally," he answered. "Now listen, your husband has
spoken to the minister of a plan for the reform of the administration;
the paper I have shown you is a part of that plan. I want to know what
it is. Find out, and tell me to-night."

"I will," she answered, wholly unaware of the important nature of the
errand which brought des Lupeaulx to the house that morning.

"Madame, the hair-dresser."

"At last!" thought