belie, returned home immediately, promising her husband to send back the
carriage for him. Shortly after, the Marquise de Campvallon, obeying a
secret sign from M. de Camors, rejoined him in the retired boudoir, which
recalled to them both the most culpable incident of their lives. She sat
down beside him on the divan with a haughty nonchalance.

"What is it?" she said.

"Why do you watch me?" asked Camors. "It is unworthy of you!"

"Ah! an explanation? a disagreeable thing. It is the first between us--
at least let us be quick and complete."

She spoke in a voice of restrained passion--her eyes fixed on her foot,
which she twisted in her satin shoe.

"Well, tell the truth," she said. "You are in love with your wife."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Unworthy of you, I repeat."

"What, then, mean these delicate attentions to her?"

"You ordered me to marry her, but not to kill her, I suppose?"

She made a strange movement of her eyebrows, which he did not see, for
neither of them looked at the other. After a pause she said:

"She has her son! She has her mother! I have no one but you. Hear me,
my friend; do not make me jealous, for when I am so, ideas torment me
which terrify even myself. Wait an instant. Since we are on this