Suddenly the door opens.  Some one is there whose features can not be distinguished.  Who can it be?  The Delobelles never receive calls.  The mother, who has turned her head, thinks at first that some one has come from the shop to get the week’s work.

“My husband has just gone to your place, Monsieur.  We have nothing here.  Monsieur Delobelle has taken everything.”

The man comes forward without speaking, and as he approaches the window his features can be distinguished.  He is a tall, solidly built fellow with a bronzed face, a thick, red beard, and a deep voice, and is a little slow of speech.

“Ah! so you don’t know me, Mamma Delobelle?”

“Oh!  I knew you at once, Monsieur Frantz,” said Desiree, very calmly, in a cold, sedate tone.

“Merciful heavens! it’s Monsieur Frantz.”

Quickly Mamma Delobelle runs to the lamp, lights it, and closes the window.

“What! it is you, is it, my dear Frantz?” How coolly she says it, the little rascal!  “I knew you at once.”  Ah, the little iceberg!  She will always be the same.

A veritable little iceberg, in very truth.  She is very pale, and her hand as it lies in Frantz’s is white and cold.

She seems to him improved, even more refined than before.  He seems to her superb, as always, with a melancholy, weary expression in the depths of his eyes, which makes him more of a man than when he went away.

His weariness is due to his hurried journey, undertaken immediately on his receipt of Sigismond’s letter.  Spurred on by the word dishonor, he had started instantly, without awaiting his leave of absence, risking his place and his future prospects; and, hurrying from steamships to railways, he had not stopped until he reached Paris.  Reason enough for being weary, especially when one has travelled in eager haste to reach one’s destination, and when one’s mind has been continually beset by impatient thoughts, making the journey ten times over in incessant doubt and fear and perplexity.

His melancholy began further back.  It began on the day when the woman he loved refused to marry him, to become, six months later, the wife of his brother; two terrible blows in close succession, the second even more painful than the first.  It is true that, before entering into that marriage, Risler had written to him to ask his permission to be happy, and had written in such touching, affectionate terms that the violence of the blow was somewhat diminished; and then, in due time, life in a strange country, hard work, and long journeys had softened his grief.  Now only a vast background of melancholy remains; unless, indeed, the hatred and wrath by which he is animated at this moment against the woman who is dishonoring his brother may be a remnant of his former love.

But no!  Frantz Risler thinks only of avenging the honor of the Rislers.  He comes not as a lover, but as a judge; and Sidonie may well look to herself.