“What has gone wrong?” asked he.

“I am very angry with myself for having listened to the voice of my own heart and to your entreaties,” answered she, “and I think that both of us have committed a grave error.”

“Indeed, and what have we done?”

“Norbert, your wife suspects something.”

“Impossible!  Why, she was praising you after you had left.”

“If that is the case, then she is indeed a much more clever woman than I had imagined, for she knows how to conceal her suspicions until she is in a position to prove them.”

Diana spoke with such a serious air of conviction, that Norbert became quite alarmed.

“What shall we do?” asked he.

“The best thing would be to give up meeting each other, I think.”

“Never; I tell you, never!”

“Let me reflect; in the meantime be prudent; for both our sakes, be prudent.”

To further his ends, Norbert entirely changed his mode of life.  He gave up going to his clubs, refused invitations to fast suppers, and no longer spent his nights in gambling and drinking.  He drove out with his wife, and frequently spent his evenings with her, and at the club began to be looked on as quite a model husband.  This great change, however, was not effected without many a severe inward struggle.  He felt deeply humiliated at the life of deception that he was forced to lead, but Diana’s hand, apparently so slight and frail, held him with a grip of steel.

“We must live in this way,” said she, in answer to his expostulations, “first, because it must be so; and, secondly, because it is my will.  On our present mode of conduct depends all our future safety, and I wish the Duchess to believe that with me happiness and content must have come to her fireside.”

Norbert could not gainsay this very reasonable proposition on the part of Madame de Mussidan, for he was more in love than ever, and the terrible fear that if he went in any way contrary to her wishes that she would refuse to see him any more, stayed the words of objection that rose to his lips.

After hesitating for a little longer, the Duchess made up her mind to accept the offer of friendship which Diana had so ingenuously offered to her, and finished by giving herself up to the bitterest enemy that she had in the world.  By degrees she had no secrets from her new friend, and one day, after a long and confidential conversation, she acknowledged to Diana the whole secret of the early love of her girlish days, the memory of which had never faded from the inmost recesses of her heart, and was rash enough to mention George de Croisenois by name.  Madame de Mussidan was overjoyed at what she considered so signal a victory.

“Now I have her,” thought she, “and vengeance is within my grasp.”