“Besides, I’ve had enough of it,” she declared.  “I shan’t receive today.  Go and say you don’t expect me now.”

“Madame will think the matter over; Madame will receive Monsieur Steiner,” murmured Zoe gravely, without budging from her place.  She was annoyed to see her mistress on the verge of committing another foolish mistake.

Then she mentioned the Walachian, who ought by now to find time hanging heavy on his hands in the bedroom.  Whereupon Nana grew furious and more obstinate than ever.  No, she would see nobody, nobody!  Who’d sent her such a blooming leech of a man?

“Chuck ’em all out!  I—­I’m going to play a game of bezique with Madame Maloir.  I prefer doing that.”

The bell interrupted her remarks.  That was the last straw.  Another of the beggars yet!  She forbade Zoe to go and open the door, but the latter had left the kitchen without listening to her, and when she reappeared she brought back a couple of cards and said authoritatively: 

“I told them that Madame was receiving visitors.  The gentlemen are in the drawing room.”

Nana had sprung up, raging, but the names of the Marquis de Chouard and of Count Muffat de Beuville, which were inscribed on the cards, calmed her down.  For a moment or two she remained silent.

“Who are they?” she asked at last.  “You know them?”

“I know the old fellow,” replied Zoe, discreetly pursing up her lips.

And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added simply: 

“I’ve seen him somewhere.”

This remark seemed to decide the young woman.  Regretfully she left the kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk and take your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which was being kept warm over a handful of glowing embers.  She left Mme Maloir behind her.  That lady was now busy reading her fortune by the cards; she had never yet taken her hat off, but now in order to be more at her ease she undid the strings and threw them back over her shoulders.

In the dressing room, where Zoe rapidly helped her on with a tea gown, Nana revenged herself for the way in which they were all boring her by muttering quiet curses upon the male sex.  These big words caused the lady’s maid not a little distress, for she saw with pain that her mistress was not rising superior to her origin as quickly as she could have desired.  She even made bold to beg Madame to calm herself.

“You bet,” was Nana’s crude answer; “they’re swine; they glory in that sort of thing.”

Nevertheless, she assumed her princesslike manner, as she was wont to call it.  But just when she was turning to go into the drawing room Zoe held her back and herself introduced the Marquis de Chouard and the Count Muffat into the dressing room.  It was much better so.

“I regret having kept you waiting, gentlemen,” said the young woman with studied politeness.