sider the
head-clerk's resignation.

Lisbeth dressed to go to the Baroness, with whom she was to dine.

"You will come back in time to make tea for us, my Betty?" said Valerie.

"I hope so."

"You hope so--why? Have you come to sleeping with Adeline to drink her
tears while she is asleep?"

"If only I could!" said Lisbeth, laughing. "I would not refuse. She is
expiating her happiness--and I am glad, for I remember our young days.
It is my turn now. She will be in the mire, and I shall be Comtesse de
Forzheim!"

Lisbeth set out for the Rue Plumet, where she now went as to the
theatre--to indulge her emotions.

The residence Hulot had found for his wife consisted of a large,
bare entrance-room, a drawing-room, and a bed and dressing-room. The
dining-room was next the drawing-room on one side. Two servants' rooms
and a kitchen on the third floor completed the accommodation, which was
not unworthy of a Councillor of State, high up in the War Office. The
house, the court-yard, and the stairs were extremely handsome.

The Baroness, who had to furnish her drawing-room, bed-room, and
dining-room with the relics of her splendor, had brought away the best
of the remains from the house in the Rue de l'Universite. Indeed, the
poor woman was attached to these mute witnesses of her happier life;
to her they had an almost consoling eloquence. In memory she saw her
flowers, as in the carpets she could trace patterns hardly visible now
to other eyes.

On going into the spacious anteroom, where twelve chairs, a barometer,
a large stove, and long, white cotton curtains, bordered with red,
suggested the dreadful waiting-room of a Government office, the visitor
felt oppressed, conscious at once of the isolation in which the mistress
lived. Grief, like pleasure, infects the atmosphere. A first glance into
any home is enough to tell you whether love or despair reigns there.

Adeline would be found sitting in an immense bedroom with beautiful
furniture by Jacob Desmalters, of mahogany finished in the Empire style
with ormolu, which looks even less inviting than the brass-work of Louis
XVI.! It gave one a shiver to see this lonely woman sitting on a Roman
chair, a work-table with sphinxes before her, colorless, affecting false
cheerfulness, but preserving her imperial air, as she had preserved
the blue velvet gown she always wore in the house. Her proud spirit
sustained her strength and preserved her beauty.

The Baroness, by