“I declare,” murmured Mme Chantereau, “just fancy if the countess were to return to life.  Why, can you not imagine her coming in among all these crowds of people!  And then there’s all this gilding and this uproar!  It’s scandalous!”

“Sabine’s out of her senses,” replied Mme du Joncquoy.  “Did you see her at the door?  Look, you can catch sight of her here; she’s wearing all her diamonds.”

For a moment or two they stood up in order to take a distant view of the count and countess.  Sabine was in a white dress trimmed with marvelous English point lace.  She was triumphant in beauty; she looked young and gay, and there was a touch of intoxication in her continual smile.  Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little pale, but he, too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion.

“And just to think that he was once master,” continued Mme Chantereau, “and that not a single rout seat would have come in without his permission!  Ah well, she’s changed all that; it’s her house now.  D’you remember when she did not want to do her drawing room up again?  She’s done up the entire house.”

But the ladies grew silent, for Mme de Chezelles was entering the room, followed by a band of young men.  She was going into ecstasies and marking her approval with a succession of little exclamations.

“Oh, it’s delicious, exquisite!  What taste!” And she shouted back to her followers: 

“Didn’t I say so?  There’s nothing equal to these old places when one takes them in hand.  They become dazzling!  It’s quite in the grand seventeenth-century style.  Well, now she can receive.”

The two old ladies had again sat down and with lowered tones began talking about the marriage, which was causing astonishment to a good many people.  Estelle had just passed by them.  She was in a pink silk gown and was as pale, flat, silent and virginal as ever.  She had accepted Daguenet very quietly and now evinced neither joy nor sadness, for she was still as cold and white as on those winter evenings when she used to put logs on the fire.  This whole fete given in her honor, these lights and flowers and tunes, left her quite unmoved.

“An adventurer,” Mme du Joncquoy was saying.  “For my part, I’ve never seen him.”

“Take care, here he is,” whispered Mme Chantereau.

Daguenet, who had caught sight of Mme Hugon and her sons, had eagerly offered her his arm.  He laughed and was effusively affectionate toward her, as though she had had a hand in his sudden good fortune.

“Thank you,” she said, sitting down near the fireplace.  “You see, it’s my old corner.”

“You know him?” queried Mme du Joncquoy, when Daguenet had gone.  “Certainly I do—­a charming young man.  Georges is very fond of him.  Oh, they’re a most respected family.”