the Mademoiselle de la Vire who had
borne herself so loftily in the King of Navarre's ante-chamber. This
I did, not out of pique or wounded pride, which I no more, God knows,
harboured against her than against a bird; but that I might not in my
new prosperity forget the light in which such a woman, young, spoiled,
and beautiful, must still regard me.

Keeping to this inoffensive posture, I was the more hurt when I found
her gratitude fade with the hour. After the first two days, during which
I remarked that she was very silent, seldom speaking to me or looking at
me, she resumed much of her old air of disdain. For that I cared little;
but she presently went farther, and began to rake up the incidents which
had happened at St. Jean d'Angely, and in which I had taken part. She
continually adverted to my poverty while there, to the odd figure I had
cut, and the many jests her friends had made at my expense. She seemed
to take a pleasure positively savage in these, gibing at me sometimes
so bitterly as to shame and pain me, and bring the colour to Madame de
Rosny's cheeks.

To the time we had spent together, on the other hand, she never or
rarely referred. One afternoon, however, a week after my arrival at
Rosny, I found her sitting alone in the parlour. I had not known she
was there, and I was for withdrawing at once with a bow and a muttered
apology. But she stopped me with an angry gesture. 'I do not bite,'
she said, rising from her stool and meeting my eyes, a red spot in each
cheek. 'Why do you look at me like that? Do you know, M. de Marsac, that
I have no patience with you.' And she stamped her foot on the floor.

'But, mademoiselle,' I stammered humbly, wondering what in the world she
meant, 'what have I done?'

'Done?' she repeated angrily. 'Done? It is not what you have done, it is
what you are. I have no patience with you. Why are you so dull, sir? Why
are you so dowdy? Why do you go about with your doublet awry, and your
hair lank? Why do you speak to Maignan as if he were a gentleman? Why
do you look always solemn and polite, and as if all the world were a
preche? Why? Why? Why, I say?'

She stopped from sheer lack of breath, leaving me as much astonished as
ever in my life. She looked so beautiful in her fury and fierceness too,
that I could only stare at her and wonder dumbly what it all meant.

'Well!' she cried impatiently, after bearing this as long as she could,
'have you not a word to say for your