ce of the letters you say
were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?"
said the Duc de Grandlieu.

And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding line.

"I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it," replied Madame
Camusot, quaking.

"My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!" said the
Duchess.

"Poor Duchess!" thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that terrified
him.

"What do you think, my dear little Diane?" said the Duke in a whisper,
as he led her away into a recess.

"Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made
an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little
Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest
of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her which
were enough to turn the brain of a saint.--We are three daughters of Eve
in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing."

The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who were
talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady's favor.

"We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!" said the Duke, with
a peculiar shrug. "This is what comes of opening one's house to people
one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an acquaintance, one
ought to know all about his fortune, his relations, all his previous
history----"

This speech is the moral of my story--from the aristocratic point of
view.

"That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. "Now we must
think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me----"

"We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really
depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be
in Paris!--Madame," he added to Madame Camusot, "thank you so much for
having thought of us----"

This was Madame Camusot's dismissal. The daughter of the court usher
had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de
Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much
friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her, in
a way, to the Duke and Duchess.

"On my own account," said she, "to say nothing of her having been up
before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance
for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done
me such a service