The future duchess showed that she was but little flattered by the girl’s reflections.  It was scarcely worth while not to put on airs even with servants, to meet such fools who become over-familiar with you immediately.  So, in future, she would strive to be not such a kind-hearted girl.  She would keep servants at a distance.  They would see.  Meanwhile, she was delighted to have made a clean sweep in the house, she could now lie to Rosas as much as she pleased.

Besides, the duke, who was madly in love and whose desire was daily whetted by Marianne, would have been capable, as Lissac said, of accepting everything and forgetting all, so that he might clasp the woman in his arms.  She held him entirely in her grasp, under the domination of her intoxicating seductiveness, skilfully granting by a kiss that kindled the blood in Jose’s veins the promise of more ardent caresses.  In this very exercise, she assumed a passionate tenderness like a courtesan accustomed to easy defeat who resists her very disposition so that she may not be too soon vanquished.  She had ungovernable impulses that carried her toward Rosas as to an unknown pleasure.

The ivory-like pallor of this red-haired man with sunken eyes and trembling lips, almost cold when she sought them under his tawny moustache, pleased her.  She sometimes said to him that under his gentle manner he had the appearance of a tiger.  “Or of a cat, and that pleases me, for I am myself of that nature.  Ah! how I love you!” She felt herself tremble with fear of that being whom she felt that she had conquered and who was entirely hers, but she was strangely troubled in divining some of his secret thoughts.

She was in a hurry to have the marriage concluded.  Secretly if it were desired, but legally and positively.  She dreaded Jose’s reawakening, as it were.  She did not know how, perhaps an anonymous letter, a chance meeting with Guy, an explanation, who knows?

“Although, after all,” she thought, “I have been foolish to trouble myself about this Guy.  Word threats, that’s all!”

The duke had treated her as a virtuous girl, requiring her to declare that she had never loved any but him, or that, at least, no living person had the right to say that he had possessed her.  She had sworn all that he desired, saying to Uncle Kayser:  “Oaths like that are like political promises, they bind one to nothing!”

The uncle began to entertain an extravagant admiration for his “little Marianne.”  There is a woman, sure enough!  Wonderful elegance!  She had promised to have a studio built for him, in which he could, instead of painting, take his ease, stretched on a divan, smoking his pipe, and pass his days in floating to the ceiling his theories of high and moral art!  An ideal picture!

He also was in favor of prompt action in respect to the marriage.  As little noise as possible.  The least hitch and all was lost.  What a pity!