"_Regardez done!_" said she, pulling me by the sleeve, just as I was
standing up, a little behind her chair, looking at the stage. "That lady
in the blue _glacé_ never takes her eyes from our box! She points us out
to the gentleman who is with her--do look!"

I turned my glass in the direction to which she pointed, and recognised
Madame de Marignan!

I turned hot and cold, red and white, all in one moment, and shrank back
like a snail that has been touched, or a sea-anemone at the first dig of
the naturalist.

"Does she know you?" asked Josephine.

"I--I--probably--that is to say--I have met her in society."

"And who is the gentleman?"

That was just what I was wondering. It was not Delaroche. It was no one
whom I had ever seen before. It was a short, fat, pale man, with a bald
head, and a ribbon in his button-hole.

"Is he her husband?" pursued Josephine.

The suggestion flashed upon me like a revelation. Had I not heard that
M. de Marignan was coming home from Algiers? Of course it was he. No
doubt of it. A little vulgar, fat, bald man.... Pshaw, just the sort of
a husband that she deserved!