reflected on
_Trompe-la-Mort's_ scheming:

"I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!"

He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A
strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.

Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien's
honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were they not bound to be
equally secret, each for the other? Such a compact, in which each is in
turn master and slave, is not to be found twice in any one life.

Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and walked into the
Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming. At this moment the windows were
open, the fragrance from the garden scented the room, the flower-basket
in the centre displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess, seated on
a sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de Chaulieu. Several
women together formed a group remarkable for their various attitudes,
stamped with the different expression which each strove to give to an
affected sorrow. In the fashionable world nobody takes any interest in
grief or suffering; everything is talk. The men were walking up and
down the room or in the garden. Clotilde and Josephine were busy at
the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc de Grandlieu, the Marquis
d'Ajuda-Pinto, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse were playing Wisk, as they
called it, in a corner of the room.

When Lucien was announced he walked across the room to make his bow to
the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief he could read in her face.

"Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her son-in-law, the
Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just dead. The young Duc de Soria
and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to nurse their brother, have
written this sad intelligence. Louise is heart-broken."

"A women is not loved twice in her life as Louise was loved by her
husband," said Madeleine de Mortsauf.

"She will be a rich widow," observed the old Duchesse d'Uxelles, looking
at Lucien, whose face showed no change of expression.

"Poor Louise!" said Madame d'Espard. "I understand her and pity her."

The Marquise d'Espard put on the pensive look of a woman full of soul
and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but ten years old, raised
knowing eyes to her mother's face, but the satirical glance was
repressed by a glance from the Duchess. This is bringing children up
properly.

"If my daughter lives through the shock," said Madame de Chaulieu,
with a v