“Stay here,” said Felix, “and watch.”

So saying, he took the arm of his wife and moved to a little distance.  Presently, Nathan, who had been hunting up and down the foyer like a dog looking for its master, returned to the spot where the mask had addressed him.  Seeing on his face an expression he could not conceal, Florine placed herself like a post in front of him, and said, imperiously:—­

“I don’t wish you to leave me again; I have my reasons for this.”

The countess then, at the instigation of her husband, went up to Raoul and said in his ear,—­

“Marie.  Who is this woman?  Leave her at once, and meet me at the foot of the grand staircase.”

In this difficult extremity Raoul dropped Florine’s arm, and though she caught his own and held it forcibly, she was obliged, after a moment, to let him go.  Nathan disappeared into the crowd.

“What did I tell you?” said Felix in Florine’s astonished ears, offering her his arm.

“Come,” she said; “whoever you are, come.  Have you a carriage here?”

For all answer, Vandenesse hurried Florine away, followed by his wife.  A few moments later the three masks, driven rapidly by the Vandenesse coachman, reached Florine’s house.  As soon as she had entered her own apartments the actress unmasked.  Madame de Vandenesse could not restrain a quiver of surprise at Florine’s beauty as she stood there choking with anger, and superb in her wrath and jealousy.

“There is, somewhere in these rooms,” said Vandenesse, “a portfolio, the key of which you have never had; the letters are probably in it.”

“Well, well, for once in my life I am bewildered; you know something that I have been uneasy about for some days,” cried Florine, rushing into the study in search of the portfolio.

Vandenesse saw that his wife was turning pale beneath her mask.  Florine’s apartment revealed more about the intimacy of the actress and Nathan than any ideal mistress would wish to know.  The eye of a woman can take in the truth of such things in a second, and the countess saw vestiges of Nathan which proved to her the certainty of what Vandenesse had said.  Florine returned with the portfolio.

“How am I to open it?” she said.

The actress rang the bell and sent into the kitchen for the cook’s knife.  When it came she brandished it in the air, crying out in ironical tones:—­

“With this they cut the necks of ‘poulets.’”

The words, which made the countess shiver, explained to her, even better than her husband had done the night before, the depths of the abyss into which she had so nearly fallen.

“What a fool I am!” said Florine; “his razor will do better.”

She fetched one of Nathan’s razors from his dressing-table, and slit the leather cover of the portfolio, through which Marie’s letters dropped.  Florine snatched one up hap-hazard, and looked it over.