“No, mademoiselle, no!”

“Then, why don’t you want him to succeed in his love?  But he will, you’ll see!  Five hundred francs on Costeclar!  Do you take it?  No?  I am sorry.  It’s twenty-five napoleons lost for me.  I know very well that Mlle.—­what’s her name?”

“Gilberte.”

“Hallo! a nice name for a cashier’s daughter!  I am aware that she once sent that poor Costeclar and his offer to—­Chaillot.  But she had resources then; whilst now—­It’s stupid as it can be; but people have to eat!”

“There are still women, mademoiselle, capable of starving to death.”

M. de Tregars now felt satisfied.  It seemed evident to him that they had somehow got wind of his intentions; that Mlle. de Thaller had been sent to feel the ground; and that she only attacked Mlle. Gilberte in order to irritate him, and compel him, in a moment of anger, to declare himself.

“Bash!” she said, “Mlle. Favoral is like all the others.  If she had to select between the amiable Costeclar and a charcoal furnace, it is not the furnace she would take.”

At all times, Marius de Tregars disliked Mlle. Cesarine to a supreme degree; but at this moment, without the pressing desire he had to see the Baron and Baroness de Thaller, he would have withdrawn.

“Believe me, mademoiselle,” he uttered coldly.  “Spare a poor girl stricken by a most cruel misfortune.  Worse might happen to you.”

“To me!  And what the mischief do you suppose can happen me?”

“Who knows?”

She started to her feet so violently, that she upset the piano-stool.

“Whatever it may be,” she exclaimed, “I say in advance, I am glad!”

And as M. de Tregars turned his head in some surprise,

“Yes, I am glad!” she repeated, “because it would be a change; and I am sick of the life I lead.  Yes, sick to be eternally and invariably happy of that same dreary happiness.  And to think that there are idiots who believe that I amuse myself, and who envy my fate!  To think, that, when I ride through the streets, I hear girls exclaim, whilst looking at me, ‘Isn’t she lucky?’ Little fools!  I’d like to see them in my place.  They live, they do.  Their pleasures are not all alike.  They have anxieties and hopes, ups and downs, hours of rain and hours of sunshine; whilst I—­always dead calm! the barometer always at ‘Set fair.’  What a bore!  Do you know what I did to-day?  Exactly the same thing as yesterday; and to-morrow I’ll do the same thing as to-day.

“A good dinner is a good thing; but always the same dinner, without extras or additions—­pouah!  Too many truffles.  I want some corned beef and cabbage.  I know the bill of fare by heart, you see.  In winter, theatres and balls; in summer, races and the seashore; summer and winter, shopping, rides to the bois, calls, trying dresses, perpetual adoration by mother’s friends, all of them brilliant and gallant fellows to whom the mere thought of my dowry gives the jaundice.  Excuse me, if I yawn:  I am thinking of their conversations.