knew within her innermost heart that all this had been arranged and
preordained: not by Fate--not by a Higher Hand, but by the most skilful
intriguer present-day France had ever known.

And even now, as she was half succeeding in turning Juliette away from
the sight of Candeille, she was not the least surprised or startled at seeing
Chauvelin standing in the very doorway through which she had hoped to
pass. Once glance at his face had made her fears tangible and real: there
was a look of satisfaction and triumph in his pale, narrow eyes, a flash in
them of approbation directed at the insolent attitude of the French
actress: he looked like the stage-manager of a play, content with the
effect his own well-arranged scenes were producing.

What he hoped to gain by this--somewhat vulgar--quarrel between the
two women, Marguerite of course could not guess: that something was
lurking in his mind, inimical to herself and to her husband, she did not for
a moment doubt, and at this moment she felt that she would have given
her very life to induce Candeille and Juliette to cease this passage of
arms, without further provocation on either side.

But though Juliette might have been ready to yield to Lady Blakeney's
persuasion, Desiree Candeille, under Chauvelin's eye, and fired by her
own desire to further humiliate this overbearing aristocrat, did not wish
the little scene to end so tamely just yet.

"Your old calotin was made to part with his booty, m'dear," she said,
with a contemptuous shrug of her bare shoulders. "Paris and France have
been starving these many years past: a paternal government seized all it
could with which to reward those that served it well, whilst all that would
have been brought bread and meat for the poor was being greedily