only amusing yourself with me."

The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.

"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."

"What! can it be _still_ Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.

Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--

"Why not, madame?"

Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.

This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
rapid or sidelong glance. The lips of the marquise paled, but that was
all. She rang the bell for wood, and so constrained Rastignac to rise
and take his leave.

"If that be so," said the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and
rigid manner, "you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why
your pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a