r. The widow Rapally's avowed age was forty, but those who knew her
longest added another ten years to that: so, to avoid error, let us say
she was forty-five. She was a solid little body, rather stouter than was
necessary for beauty; her hair was black, her complexion brown, her eyes
prominent and always moving; lively, active, and if one once yielded to
her whims, exacting beyond measure; but until then buxom and soft, and
inclined to pet and spoil whoever, for the moment, had arrested her
volatile fancy. Just as we make her acquaintance this happy individual
was a certain Maitre Quennebert, a notary of Saint Denis, and the comedy
played between him and the widow was an exact counterpart of the one
going on in the rooms of Mademoiselle de Guerchi, except that the roles
were inverted; for while the lady was as much in love as the Duc de
Vitry, the answering devotion professed by the notary was as insincere
as the disinterested attachment to her lover displayed by the whilom
maid of honour.

Maitre Quennebert was still young and of attractive appearance, but his
business affairs were in a bad way. For long he had been pretending not
to understand the marked advances of the widow, and he treated her with
a reserve and respect she would fain have dispensed with, and which
sometimes made her doubt of his love. But it was impossible for her as
a woman to complain, so she was forced to accept with resignation the
persistent and unwelcome consideration with which he surrounded her.
Maitre Quennebert was a man of common sense and much experience, and had
formed a scheme which he was prevented from carrying out by an obstacle
which he had no power to remove. He wanted, therefore, to gain time, for
he knew that the day he gave the susceptible widow a legal right over
him he would lose his independence. A lover to whose prayers the adored
one remains deaf too long is apt to draw back in discouragement, but a
woman whose part is restricted to awaiting those prayers, and answering
with a yes or no, necessarily learns patience. Maitre Quennebert would
therefore have felt no anxiety as to the effect of his dilatoriness on
the widow, were it not for the existence of a distant cousin of the
late Monsieur Rapally, who was also paying court to her, and that with
a warmth much greater than had hitherto been displayed by himself. This
fact, in view of the state of the notary's affairs, forced him at last
to display more energy. To make up l