lerie.

"This evening," said Crevel to himself too, as he sorted his hand, "I
must know where I stand."

"You have a heart!" cried Marneffe. "You have just revoked."

"I beg your pardon," said Crevel, trying to withdraw his card.--"This
Baron seems to me very much in the way," he went on, thinking to
himself. "If Valerie carries on with my Baron, well and good--it is a
means to my revenge, and I can get rid of him if I choose; but as for
this cousin!--He is one Baron too many; I do not mean to be made a fool
of. I will know how they are related."

That evening, by one of those strokes of luck which come to pretty
women, Valerie was charmingly dressed. Her white bosom gleamed under a
lace tucker of rusty white, which showed off the satin texture of her
beautiful shoulders--for Parisian women, Heaven knows how, have some way
of preserving their fine flesh and remaining slender. She wore a black
velvet gown that looked as if it might at any moment slip off her
shoulders, and her hair was dressed with lace and drooping flowers. Her
arms, not fat but dimpled, were graced by deep ruffles to her sleeves.
She was like a luscious fruit coquettishly served in a handsome dish,
and making the knife-blade long to be cutting it.

"Valerie," the Brazilian was saying in her ear, "I have come back
faithful to you. My uncle is dead; I am twice as rich as I was when I
went away. I mean to live and die in Paris, for you and with you."

"Lower, Henri, I implore you----"

"Pooh! I mean to speak to you this evening, even if I should have to
pitch all these creatures out of window, especially as I have lost two
days in looking for you. I shall stay till the last.--I can, I suppose?"

Valerie smiled at her adopted cousin, and said:

"Remember that you are the son of my mother's sister, who married your
father during Junot's campaign in Portugal."

"What, I, Montes de Montejanos, great grandson of a conquerer of Brazil!
Tell a lie?"

"Hush, lower, or we shall never meet again."

"Pray, why?"

"Marneffe, like all dying wretches, who always take up some last whim,
has a revived passion for me----"

"That cur?" said the Brazilian, who knew his Marneffe; "I will settle
him!"

"What violence!"

"And where did you get all this splendor?" the Brazilian went on, just
struck by the magnificence of the apartment.

She began to laugh.

"Henri! what bad taste!" said she.

She had felt two burning flashes of jealousy which had moved