“What can these people want?” said Madame de Beaulieu.

Monsieur Monlinet was a wealthy tradesman, who had just bought the Chateau de la Varenne, near by.  His daughter had been at school with Claire and the Baroness de Prefont, and a bitter warfare was waged incessantly between the juvenile aristocrats and the monied damsels without handles to their names.  All recollections of Athenais had faded from Claire’s mind, but hatred was still rife in Mlle. Monlinet’s heart; and when her father, in view of her marriage, bought La Varenne for her, the chateau was a threatening fortress, whence she might pounce down on her enemy.

Now she advanced towards Mlle, de Beaulieu when she entered the drawing-room at Beaulieu and threw her arms round her neck, and boldly exclaimed, “Ah, my beautiful Claire!  How happy am I to see you!”

This young person had wonderfully improved, had become very pretty, and now paralysed her adversaries by her audacity.  She soon contrived to leave the others, and when alone with Claire informed her she had come to beg for advice respecting her marriage.

Mlle, de Beaulieu instantly divined what her relatives had been hiding so carefully, and though she became very pale while Athenais looked at her in fiendish delight, she determined to die rather than own her love for Gaston, and exerted all her will to master herself.  The noise of a furious gallop resounded, and the Duc de Bligny dashed into the courtyard on a horse white with foam.  He would have entered the drawing-room, but the baron hindered him, while Maitre Bachelin went to ask if he might be received.

Claire wore a frightful expression of anger.

“Be kind enough”—­she turned to Bachelin—­“to ask the duke to go round to the terrace and wait a moment.  Don’t bring him in till I make you a sign from the window; but, in the meantime, send M. Derblay to me.”

The marchioness and the baroness immediately improvided a mise-en-scene, so that when the duke entered, he perceived the marchioness seated as usual in her easy chair, the baroness standing near the chimney-piece, and Claire with her back to the light.  He bowed low before the noble woman who had been his second mother.

“Madame la Marquise,” he said, “my dear aunt, you see my emotion—­my grief!  Claire, I cannot leave this room till you have forgiven me!”

“But you owe me no explanation, duke,” Claire said, with amazing serenity; “and you need no forgiveness.  I have been told you intend to marry.  You had the right to do so, it seems to me.  Were you not as free as myself?”

Thereupon, approaching the doorway, she made a sign to Philippe.  Athenais boldly followed the ironmaster.

“I must introduce you to one another, gentlemen.  Monsieur le Duc de Bligny—­my cousin.”  Then, turning towards her faithless lover, and defying him, as it were, with her proud gaze, she added, “Duke, Monsieur Derblay, my future husband.”