e the marquise gave a forced laugh, and then added, in a tone of
indulgence:--

"If we desire to continue friends let there be no more _mistakes_, of
which it is impossible that I should be the dupe."

"Upon my honor, madame, you are so--far more than you think," replied
Eugene.

"What are you talking about?" asked Monsieur de Listomere, who, for
the last minute, had been listening to the conversation, the meaning of
which he could not penetrate.

"Oh! nothing that would interest you," replied his wife.

Monsieur de Listomere tranquilly returned to the reading of his paper,
and presently said:--

"Ah! Madame de Mortsauf is dead; your poor brother has, no doubt, gone
to Clochegourde."

"Are you aware, monsieur," resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene,
"that what you have just said is a great impertinence?"

"If I did not know the strictness of your principles," he answered,
naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which I
deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are only
amusing yourself with me."

The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.

"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."

"What! can it be _still_ Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.

Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--

"Why not, madame?"

Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.

This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a rapid
or sidelong glance. The lips of the marquise paled, but that was all.
She rang the bell for wood, and so constrained Rastignac to rise and
take his leave.

"If that be so," said the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and
rigid manner, "you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why your
pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a letter,
is not a friend's opera-hat, which you might have taken, carelessly, on
leaving a ball."

Eugene, discomfited, looked at the marquise