When her maid brought her tea, she at the same time gave her a letter
from her husband. He told her that he was going to undertake a long
journey, and in a postscript he added that his lawyer would provide her
with any sums of money she might require for all her expenses.


III

It was at the Opéra, between two of the acts in _Robert the Devil_. In
the stalls, the men were standing up, with their hats on, their
waistcoats cut very low so as to show a large amount of white shirt
front, in which the gold and precious stones of their studs glistened,
and were looking at the boxes full of ladies in low dresses, covered
with diamonds and pearls, and who were expanding like flowers in that
illuminated hothouse, where the beauty of the faces and the whiteness of
their shoulders seemed to bloom in order to be looked at, in the midst
of the music and of human voices.

Two friends, with their backs to the orchestra were scanning those rows
of elegance, that exhibition of real or false charms, of jewels, of
luxury and of pretensions which showed itself off all round the
Grand-Théâtre, and one of them Roger de Salnis, said to his companion,
Bernard Grandin: "Just look how beautiful Countess de Mascaret still
is."

Then the older, in turn, looked through his opera glasses at a tall lady
in a box opposite, who appeared to be still very young, and whose
striking beauty seemed to appeal to the eyes in every corner of the
house. Her pale complexion, of an ivory tint, gave her the appearance