The Duchess grew more and more inwardly vexed, and her little foot beat an impatient tattoo under the table, as she replied with careless brevity to a few of the commonplace observations addressed to her, and cast an occasional annoyed glance at her lord, M le Duc, a thin, military-looking individual, with a well waxed and pointed mustache, whose countenance suggested an admirably executed mask.  It was a face that said absolutely nothing,—­yet beneath its cold impassiveness linked the satyr-like, complex, half civilized, half brutish mind of the born and bred Parisian,—­the goblin-creature with whom pure virtues, whether in man or woman, are no more sacred than nuts to a monkey.  The suave charm of a polished civility sat on M le Due’s smooth brow, and beamed in his urbane smile,—­his manners were exquisite, his courtesy irreproachable, his whole demeanor that of a very precise and elegant master of deportment.  Yet, notwithstanding his calm and perfectly self-possessed exterior, he was, oddly enough, the frequent prey of certain extraordinary and ungovernable passions; there were times when he became impossible to himself,—­ and when, to escape from his own horrible thoughts, he would plunge headlong into an orgie of wild riot and debauchery, such as might have made the hair of his respectable English acquaintances stand on end, had they known to what an extent he carried his excesses.  But at these seasons of moral attack, he “went abroad for his health,” as he said, delicately touching his chest in order to suggest some interesting latent weakness there, and in these migratory excursions his wife never accompanied him, nor did she complain of his absence.  When he returned, after two or three months, he looked more the “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche” than ever; and neither he, nor the fair partner of his joys and sorrows, even committed such a breach of politeness as to inquire into each other’s doings during the time of their separation.  So they jogged on together, presenting the most delightful outward show of wedded harmony to the world,—­and only a few were found to hazard the remark, that the “racy” novels Madame la Duchesse wrote to wile away her duller hours were singularly “bitter” in tone, for a woman whose lot in life was so extremely enviable!

On this particular evening, the Duke affected to be utterly unconscious of the meaning looks his beautiful spouse shot at him every now and then,—­looks which plainly said—­“Why don’t you start some interesting subject of conversation, and stop these people from talking such every-day twaddle?” He was a clever man in his way, and his present mood was malign and mischievous; therefore he went on eating daintily, and discussing mild platitudes in the most languidly amiable manner imaginable, enjoying to the full the mental confusion and discomfort of his guests,—­confusion and discomfort which, as he very well knew, was the psychological result of their having one in their midst whose life and