Cesarine threw off a cloak, trimmed with fur, and more suitable for a colder season, but it was a sable with a sprinkling of isolated white hairs most peculiar and a present from her granduncle.  She tottered and seemed weak, for she had concluded that an affection of illness would aid her re-entrance.  As Hedwig extinguished the lamp, she sank into an arm-chair.  She curiously glanced around and inhaled with a questioning flutter of the nostrils the lasting odor of cigars and Burgundy, which the air retained.  In this gloomy apartment where she had often sat alone, sure not to be disturbed, the suggestion of uproarious jollity hurt her dignity.  A singular way to express sorrow and shame at the loss of a wife by calling in boon companions!  This did not seem like Felix Clemenceau, sober and austere, thus to drown care in champagne.

“Are you alone, girl?” she inquired, looking round with a powerful impression that the house had unexpected inmates.

“Yes.  No one is up yet in the house,” responded Hedwig, sharing her mistress’ uneasiness, though from a less indefinite reason; “at all events, nobody has come down yet.  But how did you see that it was I who came in here before the shades were drawn up?”

“Well, I had made a little peep-hole to see what my husband and his fellow conspirator were about, in the time before they shut themselves up in their studio.  But, if it is my turn to put questions,” she went on with some offended dignity, “how is it that the back door is bolted as well as barred and that I have had to sneak in like a malefactor?”

“If you please, madame, it is the rule to be very careful about fastening up, since you went away.”

“Oh, on the principle of locking the stable-door when the steed—­”

“Oh! they fear the loss of something which, without offense, I may say, they esteem more highly than you.”

Hedwig answered without even a little impertinence and the other did not resent what sounded discourteous.

“Then they do not lock up to keep me out?” she questioned.

“It might be a little bit that way, too.”

“It is a new habit.  Did the master suggest it?”

“Not the master altogether, madame, but his partner.”

“Eh! do you mean Antonino?  Monsieur had already lifted him up to be his associate, his confidant, his friend, to the exclusion of his lawful friend and confidant, his wife—­and now, does he make him his partner?”

“No, madame; though he has a good fat share in the enterprise.  It is M. Daniels who found the funds for the new company in which the master is engaged, and he manages the house to leave the master all his time to go on inventing and entertaining the grand folks we have to dinner.”

“Mr. Daniels! not the old Jew who played that queer straight trumpet at Munich—­”

“Yes, the turkophone!  Ah, he has no need to go about the music halls now—­he is, if not rich, the man who leads rich men by the nose, to come and deposit their superfluous cash in our strong-box.”