the neighborhood.

Monsieur de la Baudraye was not slow to discover the advantage he, as
Dinah's husband, held over his wife's adorers, and he made use of
them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining
two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name
with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and,
like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business,
though in the gentlest manner.

At the same time, the more certainly guiltless she was, the less
conceivable did Madame de la Baudraye's position seem to the prying
eyes of these women. Frequently, at the house of the Presidente de
Boirouge, the ladies of a certain age would spend a whole evening
discussing the La Baudraye household, among themselves of course. They
all had suspicions of a mystery, a secret such as always interests
women who have had some experience of life. And, in fact, at La
Baudraye one of those slow and monotonous conjugal tragedies was being
played out which would have remained for ever unknown if the merciless
scalpel of the nineteenth century, guided by the insistent demand for
novelty, had not dissected the darkest corners of the heart, or at any
rate those which the decency of past centuries left unopened. And that
domestic drama sufficiently accounts for Dinah's immaculate virtue
during her early married life.



A young lady, whose triumphs at school had been the outcome of her
pride, and whose first scheme in life had been rewarded by a victory,
was not likely to pause in such a brilliant career. Frail as Monsieur