Her admirers had exaggerated nothing.  In her white bridal costume she looked amazingly beautiful; and her whole person exhaled a perfume of innocence and ingenuous purity.

She was surrounded by eight or ten young persons, who overwhelmed her with congratulations and compliments.  She replied with a slightly tremulous voice, and casting down her eyes with the long, silky eyelashes.  Count Ville-Handry stood in the centre of the room, swelling with almost comic happiness; and at every moment, in replying to his friends, used the words, “My wife,” like a sweet morsel which he rolled on his tongue.

Still a careful observer might have noticed underneath his victorious airs a trace of almost painful restraint.  From time to time his face darkened as one of those unlucky, awkward people, who turn up everywhere, asked him,—­

“I hope Miss Henrietta is not complaining much?  How very sorry she must be to be detained at home!”

It is true, that, among these unlucky ones, there were not a few malicious ones.  Nobody was ignorant that something unpleasant had happened in the count’s family.  They had suspected something from the beginning of the ceremony.

For the count had hardly knelt down by Miss Brandon’s side, on a velvet cushion, when a servant wearing his livery had come up, and whispered a few words in his ear.  The guests who were nearest had seen him turn pale, and utter an expression of furious rage.

What had the servant told him?

It became soon known, thanks to the Countess Bois, who went about telling everybody with inexhaustible volubility, that she had just met Miss Ville-Handry in the street.

When the last name had been signed, nobody was, therefore, surprised at seeing Count Ville-Handry give his arm to his wife, and hand her hurriedly to her carriage,—­a magnificent state-carriage.  He had invited some twenty people, former friends of his, to a great wedding-breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them.  And once in his carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he broke forth in incoherent imprecations and absurd threatenings.

When they reached the palace, he did not wait for the coachman to drive as usually around the yard, but jumped out, and, rushing up to the vestibule, cried out,—­

“Ernest! send Ernest here!”

Ernest was his own valet, the clever artist to whom he was indebted for the roses of his complexion.  As soon as he appeared, he asked,—­

“Where is the young lady?”

“Gone out.”

“When?”

“Immediately after you, sir.”

The young countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin, had, in the meantime, come up, and gone into the room in the lower story, where this scene took place.

“Do you hear that?” he asked them.

Then, turning again to the valet, he asked,—­

“How did it happen?”