except an X ruler in old walnut, and some
casts from well-known friezes hung here and there. As she thought of her
recent agony and looked at the elaborate bouquets and the refreshments
laid by the sofa, it occurred to her that these were unusual
preparations for a suicide. She smiled without any resentment. The
naughty wretch! She only pointed with her parasol at the bonbons in the
box and said:

'Those are to make a hole in your--your--what do you call it?'

He began to laugh too.

'Oh, there's a great change since yesterday.

The business, you know, the big thing I talked to you about, is really
coming off this time, I think.'

'Really? So is mine.'

'Eh? Ah yes, Sammy's marriage.'

Their pretty cunning eyes, both of the same hard grey, but, the mother's
a little faded, exchanged one scrutinising glance.

'You'll see, we shall be rolling in riches,' he said after a moment.
'Now you must be going,' and he hurried her gently to the door.

That morning Paul had had a note from the Princess to say that she
should call for him at his own house to go to the usual place. The usual
place was the cemetery. Lately there had been what Madame Astier called
'a fresh start' of Herbert. Twice a week the widow went to the cemetery
with flowers, or tapers, or articles for the chapel, and urged the
progress of the work; her conjugal feelings had broken out again. The
fact was, that after a long and painful hesitation between her vanity
and her love, the temptation of keeping her title and the fascinations
of the delightful Paul--a hesitation the more painful that she confided
it to no one, except in her journal every evening to 'poor Herbert'--the
appointment of Sammy had finally decided her, and she thought it proper,
before taking a new husband, to complete the sepulture of the first and
have done with the mausoleum and the dangerous intimacy of its seductive
designer.

Paul, without understanding the flutterings of the foolish little soul,
was amused by them, and thought them excellent symptoms, indicating the
approach of the crisis. But the thing dragged, and he was in a hurry; it
was time to hasten the conclusion and profit by Colette's visit, which
had been long proposed but long deferred, the Princess, though curious
to see the young man's lodgings, being apparently afraid to meet him
in a place much more private than her own house or her carriage,
where there were always the servants to see. Not that he had ever be