and the cowkeeper's tanned
face seemed to expand.

"Now," said Derville to himself, as he got into his cab again, "let us
call on our opponent. We must not show our hand, but try to see hers,
and win the game at one stroke. She must be frightened. She is a woman.
Now, what frightens women most? A woman is afraid of nothing but..."

And he set to work to study the Countess' position, falling into one of
those brown studies to which great politicians give themselves up when
concocting their own plans and trying to guess the secrets of a hostile
Cabinet. Are not attorneys, in a way, statesmen in charge of private
affairs?

But a brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and
his wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the
lawyer's cleverness.

Monsieur le Comte Ferraud was the only son of a former Councillor in the
old _Parlement_ of Paris, who had emigrated during the Reign of Terror,
and so, though he saved his head, lost his fortune. He came back under
the Consulate, and remained persistently faithful to the cause of Louis
XVIII., in whose circle his father had moved before the Revolution.
He thus was one of the party in the Faubourg Saint-Germain which nobly
stood out against Napoleon's blandishments. The reputation for capacity
gained by the young Count--then simply called Monsieur Ferraud--made him
the object of the Emperor's advances, for he was often as well pleased
at his conquests among the aristocracy as at gaining a battle. The Count
was promised the restitution of his title, of such of his estates as had
not been sold, and he was shown in perspective a place in the ministry
or as senator.

The Emperor fell.

At the time of Comte Chabert's death, M. Ferraud was a young man of
six-and-twenty, without a fortune, of pleasing appearance, who had had
his successes, and whom the Faubourg Saint-Germain had adopted as doing
it credit; but Madame la Comtesse Chabert had managed to turn her share
of her husband's fortune to such good account that, after eighteen
months of widowhood, she had about forty thousand francs a year. Her
marriage to the young Count was not regarded as news in the circles of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Napoleon, approving of this union, which
carried out his idea of fusion, restored to Madame Chabert the money
falling to the Exchequer under her husband's will; but Napoleon's hopes
were again disappointed. Madame Ferraud was not only in love with her
lo