so much did she fear that Eugenie's
candor would betray them.

"She has her own box, madame," said du Tillet, nettled.

"Very good; then I will go to hers," replied the countess.

"It will be the first time you have done us that honor," said du Tillet.

The countess felt the sting of that reproach, and began to laugh.

"Well, never mind; you shall not be made to pay anything this time.
Adieu, my darling."

"She is an insolent woman," said du Tillet, picking up the flowers that
had fallen on the carpet. "You ought," he said to his wife, "to study
Madame de Vandenesse. I'd like to see you before the world as insolent
and overbearing as your sister has just been here. You have a silly,
bourgeois air which I detest."

Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven as her only answer.

"Ah ca, madame! what have you both been talking of?" said the banker,
after a pause, pointing to the flowers. "What has happened to make your
sister so anxious all of a sudden to go to your opera-box?"

The poor helot endeavored to escape questioning on the score of
sleepiness, and turned to go into her dressing-room to prepare for the
night; but du Tillet took her by the arm and brought her back under
the full light of the wax-candles which were burning in two silver-gilt
sconces between fragrant nosegays. He plunged his light eyes into hers
and said, coldly:--

"Your sister came here to borrow forty thousand francs for a man in
whom she takes an interest, who'll be locked up within three days in a
debtor's prison."

The poor woman was seized with a nervous trembling, which she endeavored
to repress.

"You alarm me," she said. "But my sister is far too well brought up,
and she loves her husband too much to be interested in any man to that
extent."

"Quite the contrary," he said, dryly. "Girls brought up as you two were,
in the constraints and practice of piety, have a thirst for liberty;
they desire happiness, and the happiness they get in marriage is never
as fine as that they dreamt of. Such girls make bad wives."

"Speak for me," said poor Eugenie, in a tone of bitter feeling, "but
respect my sister. The Comtesse de Vandenesse is happy; her husband
gives her too much freedom not to make her truly attached to him.
Besides, if your supposition were true, she would never have told me of
such a matter."

"It is true," he said, "and I forbid you to have anything to do with the
affair. My interests demand that the man shall go to prison.