he Supreme Court. How would you like to be Madame la Presidente? If
Monsieur Crevel has a finger in it, he will tell me about it if I ask
him. I shall know by to-morrow if there is any hope."

"Leave the seal with me," said Hortense; "I will not show it--mamma's
birthday is not for a month yet; I will give it to you that morning."

"No, no. Give it back to me; it must have a case."

"But I will let papa see it, that he may know what he is talking about
to the ministers, for men in authority must be careful what they say,"
urged the girl.

"Well, do not show it to your mother--that is all I ask; for if she
believed I had a lover, she would make game of me."

"I promise."

The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness turned faint.
Her daughter's cry of alarm recalled her to herself. Lisbeth went off to
fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the mother and daughter
in each other's arms, the Baroness soothing her daughter's fears, and
saying:

"It was nothing; a little nervous attack.--There is your father," she
added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say not a word
to him."

Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take him
into the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of the
difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to some
decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning advice.

Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like and
Napoleonic, for Imperial men--men who had been attached to the
Emperor--were easily distinguishable by their military deportment, their
blue coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk
stock, and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command in
circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of the old
man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so good,
that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face, framed
in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant complexion,
ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine temperament; and his
stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not exceeded the limits of "the
majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine aristocratic air and great
affability served to conceal the libertine with whom Crevel had had such
high times. He was one of those men whose eyes always light up at the
sight of a pretty woman, even of such as merely pass by, never to be
seen