In the course of this walk, while Jaune gallantly carried the market-basket, the story that Rose already had heard from the Count Siccatif de Courtray was told again—­but told with a very different coloring.  For Mademoiselle Carthame clearly perceived how great the sacrifice had been that Jaune had made for her sake, and how bravely, because it was for her sake, it had been made.  There was real pathos in his voice; once or twice he nearly broke down.  Possibly it was because she did not wish him to see her eyes that she manifested so marked an interest in the shop windows as they walked along.

“And so that adorable Marquis was unreal?” queried Mademoiselle Carthame sadly, and somewhat irrelevantly, when Jaune had told her all.

“He was not adorable.  He was a disgusting beast!” replied M. d’Antimoine savagely.

“I—­I loved him!” answered Rose, turning upon Jaune, at last, her black eyes.  They did not sparkle, as was their wont, but they were wonderfully lustrous and soft.

Jaune looked down into the market-basket and groaned.

“And—­and I love him still.  I think, I—­I hope, that he will live always in my heart.”

The voice of Mademoiselle Carthame trembled, and her hand grasped very tightly the bag of carrots that they had been unable to make a place for in the basket:  they were coming back from the market now.

Jaune did not look up.  For the life of him he could not keep back a sob.  It was bitter hard, he felt, that out of his love for Rose should come love’s wreck; and harder yet that the rival who had stolen her from him should be himself!  Through the mist of his misery he seemed to hear Rose laughing softly.  Could this be so?  Then, indeed, was the capstone set upon his grief!

“Jaune!”

He started, and so violently that a cabbage, with half a dozen potatoes after it, sprang out of the basket and rolled along the pavement at her feet.  His bowed head rose with a jerk, and their eyes met full.  In hers there was a look half mocking, that as he gazed changed into tenderness; into his, as he saw the change and perceived its meaning, there came a look of glad delight.

“As though you could deceive me!  Why, of course, I knew you from the very first!”

Then they collected the potatoes and the cabbage and walked slowly on, and great happiness was in their hearts.

The world was a brighter world for Jaune d’Antimoine when he gave into Rose’s hand the market-basket on her own doorstep, and turned reluctantly away.  But there still were clouds in it.  Rose had admitted that two things were necessary before getting married could be thought of at all seriously:  something must be done by which the nose of the Count Siccatif de Courtray would be disjointed; something must be done to assure Madame Carthame that M. d’Antimoine, in some fashion at least a little removed from semi-starvation, could maintain a wife.