head and heart.

We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she
had ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but
not subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which
are almost always the result of diseases of the chest.

It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the
lookout for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it
seemed to them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him,
indeed to prove to him, that at times when she was sure of not
seeing him she received other visits, and that these visits were
often prolonged till the following day. On being questioned,
Marguerite admitted everything to the duke, and advised him,
without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no longer,
for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken,
and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom
she was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all
he could do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to
let him still visit her, promising that he would take her as she
was, so long as he might see her, and swearing that he would
never utter a reproach against her, not though he were to die of
it.

This, then, was the state of things three months after
Marguerite's return; that is to say, in November or December,
1842.