besieged by so many suitors for her hand.

"Besides," she thought, smiling proudly, as she surveyed her reflection
in the large mirrors; "am I not as pretty as Marie-Anne?"

"Far prettier!" murmured the voice of vanity; "and you possess what your
rival does not: birth, wit, the genius of coquetry!"

She did, indeed, possess sufficient cleverness and patience to assume
and to sustain the character which seemed most likely to dazzle and to
fascinate Martial.

As to maintaining this character _after_ marriage, if it did not please
her to do so, that was another matter!

The result of all this was that during dinner Mlle. Blanche exercised
all her powers of fascination upon the young marquis.

She was so evidently desirous of pleasing him that several of the guests
remarked it.

Some were even shocked by such a breach of conventionality. But Blanche
de Courtornieu could do as she chose; she was well aware of that. Was
she not the richest heiress for miles and miles around? No slander can
tarnish the brilliancy of a fortune of more than a million in hard cash.

"Do you know that those two young people will have a joint income of
between seven and eight hundred thousand francs!" said one old viscount
to his neighbor.

Martial yielded unresistingly to the charm of his position.

How could he suspect unworthy motives in a young girl whose eyes were so
pure, whose laugh rang out with the crystalline clearness of childhood!

Involuntarily he compared her with the grave and thoughtful Marie-Anne,
and his imagination floated from one to the other, inflamed by the
strangeness of the contrast.

He occupied a seat beside Mlle. Blanche at table; and they chatted
gayly, amusing themselves at the expense of the other guests, who were
again conversing upon political matters, and whose enthusiasm waxed
warmer and warmer as course succeeded course.

Champagne was served with the dessert; and the company drank to the
allies whose victorious bayonets had forced a passage for the King to
return to Paris; they drank to the English, to the Prussians, and to the
Russians, whose horses were trampling the crops under foot.

The name of d'Escorval heard, above the clink of the glasses, suddenly
aroused Martial from his dream of enchantment.

An old gentleman had just risen, and proposed that active measures
should be taken to rid the neighborhood of the Baron d'Escorval.

"The presence of such a man dishonors our country," said he