"That is funny!" returned her husband, continuing to undress. "I
thought I saw her coming upstairs."

"She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed
impatience, and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband's part
she pretended to ring the bell.



The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
that preceded it.

Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave
it for some days.

"What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
is talking about your wife?" asked M. de Ronquerolles of M.
d'Aiglemont a short time after that night of catastrophes.

"Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aiglemont. "The
curtains of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock
that it will be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor
says. You marry a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a
girl in blooming health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she
has a passionate temperament, and find her cold, or else under her
apparent coldness there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the
death of you, or she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of
them will turn out crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any