“After all, perhaps it is through jealousy,” she thought.  “The dolt!”

Guy did not cease to look at her through his glass.

“Does that displease you?” Jouvenet asked.

“Not at all.  What is that to me?”

“This Lissac was much in love with you!”

“Ah!  Monsieur le Prefet!” Marianne observed sharply.  “I know that your office inclines you to be somewhat inquisitive, but it would be polite of you to allow my past to sleep in your dockets.  They are famous shrouds!”

Jouvenet bit his lips and in turn brought his glass to bear on Lissac.

“See,” he said, “he makes a great deal of the cross of the Christ of Portugal!  It is in very bad taste!  I thought he was a shrewder man!”

“The order of Christ is then in bad odor?”

“On the contrary; but as it is like the Legion of Honor in color, he is prohibited from wearing it in his buttonhole without displaying the small gold cross—­And I see only the red there—­”

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Prefet, there is one.”

“Oh! my glass is a wretched one!—­But even so, I do not believe Monsieur de Lissac is authorized by the Grand Chancellor to wear his decoration.  That is easily ascertained!—­I will nevertheless not fail to insert in the Officiel to-morrow a note relative to the illegality of wearing certain foreign decorations—­”

“Is this note directed against Lissac?”

“Not at all.  But he reminds me of a step that I have wished to take for a long time:  the enforcement of the law.”

The entr’acte was over.  Jouvenet withdrew, repeating all kinds of remarks with double meanings that veiled declarations of love; that if the occasion arose, he would place himself entirely at her service, and that some day she might be very glad to meet him—­

“I thank you, Monsieur le Prefet, and I will avail myself of your kindness,” replied Marianne, out of courtesy.

Something suggested to her that Guy would pay his respects to her during the next entr’acte, were it only to jest about Jouvenet’s visit, seeing that he was regarded as a compromising acquaintance, and she was not wrong.

Behind his monocle, his keen, mocking glance seemed like a taunting smile.

“Well,” he said, in a somewhat abrupt tone, as he sat near Marianne, “I congratulate you, my dear friend.”

“Why?” she answered with surprise.

“On the great news, parbleu! Your marriage.”

She turned slightly pale.

“How do you know?—­”

“I have seen the duke.  He called on me.”

“On you?  What for?”

“Can’t you make a little guess—­a very little guess—­”

“To ask you if I had been your mistress?  Lissac, you are very silly.”

“Yes, my dear Marianne, prepare yourself somewhat for the position of a duchess.  A gentleman, to whom you have sworn that I have never been your lover, could not doubt your word!—­Jose asked me nothing.  He simply stated his determination to see what I would say, or gather from my looks what I thought of it.”