of fit that he could scarce venture to move.  Almost all the young men and certain individuals with distinguished, aristocratic manners were the Marquis de Chouard’s contribution to the circle, he having kept touch with the Legitimist party after making his peace with the empire on his entrance into the Council of State.  There remained Leonide de Chezelles and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which Mme Hugon’s elderly and amiable serenity stood out in strange contrast.  And Fauchery, having sketched out his article, named this last group “Countess Sabine’s little clique.”

“On another occasion,” continued Steiner in still lower tones, “Leonide got her tenor down to Montauban.  She was living in the Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther off, and she used to come in daily in a carriage and pair in order to visit him at the Lion d’Or, where he had put up.  The carriage used to wait at the door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the house, while a crowd gathered round and looked at the horses.”

There was a pause in the talk, and some solemn moments passed silently by in the lofty room.  Two young men were whispering, but they ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was alone audible as he crossed the floor.  The lamps seemed to have paled; the fire was going out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old friends of the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied there for forty years back.  It was as though in a momentary pause of conversation the invited guests had become suddenly aware that the count’s mother, in all her glacial stateliness, had returned among them.

But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed: 

“Well, at last the news of it got about.  The young man was likely to die, and that would explain the poor child’s adoption of the religious life.  Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray would never have given his consent to the marriage.”

“They say heaps of other things too,” cried Leonide giddily.

She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk.  Sabine was won over by this gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips.  And in the vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking.  Assuredly here was the first beginning of the “little rift.”  Everyone began talking again.  Mme du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for certain that a marriage had been projected but that matters had gone no further; the men even ventured to give their opinions.  For some minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions, in which the divers elements of the circle, whether Bonapartist or Legitimist or merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to jostle one another simultaneously.  Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to wake from sleep.  Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his ease.

“Egad, they become the brides of God when they couldn’t be their cousin’s,” said Vandeuvres between his teeth.