"You will be ruined if you do not give it to me," Madame Mildau replied, "for in that case I should leave you. I couldn't live with a liar."
Her husband wrung his hands. He implored her to choose something else, but it was of no avail, and within two hours Madame Mildau had visited the jeweller and the tiara was hers.
The eventful day came at last, and Madame Mildau, escorted by her husband, attended one of the most popular balls of the season. She did not wear her tiara. There had been several highway jewellery robberies in the neighbourhood of late, and she pleased her husband immensely by leaving her diamonds carefully locked up at home.
"You are prudence itself," he said, gazing at her in admiration. "And as a reward you shall dance all the evening whilst I look on and admire you."
But soon Madame Mildau could dance no longer. She had a very bad headache, and begged her husband to take her home. M. Mildau was very sympathetic. He was very sorry for his wife, and suggested that she should take some brandy. She readily agreed that a little brandy might do her good, and they took some together in their bedroom, after which madame's husband remembered little more. He had a vague notion that his wife was rolling his neck-handkerchief round his forehead in the form of a Turkish turban, and patting him on the cheeks and smilingly wishing him a thousand pleasant dreams, and then—all was a blank. He might as well have been dead. With madame it was otherwise. The headache was, of course, a ruse. The brandy she had given her husband had been well drugged, and no sooner had she made sure it had taken effect than she snapped her daintily manicured finger-tips in the air, and retiring to her dressing-room, changed the dress she was wearing for one ten times more costly and beautiful—a dress of rose-coloured gauze, upon which a drapery of lace was suspended by agraffes of diamonds. A wreath of pale roses, that seemed to have been bathed in the dew of the morning, the better to harmonize with the delicate complexion of her lovely face, nestled in her hair, and above it, more magnificent than anything yet seen in Innsbruck, and setting off to perfection the dazzling lustre of her yellow curls, the tiara of diamonds.
After a final survey of herself in the glass, she slipped on her cloak, and stole softly out to join her intimate friend, the Countess Linitz, who was also going to the ball. All things so far had worked wonderfully well; not even a servant suspected her. In order to avoid trusting her secret to anyone in the house, she had employed a stranger to hire an elegant carriage, which was in waiting for her at a discreet distance from the front door. The ball at which Madame Mildau soon arrived with her friend was much more to her liking than the one to which she had been previously escorted by her husband. The music was more harmonious, the conversation more amiable, the dresses more elaborate, and, what was more important than all, Madame Mildau's success was even more instantaneous and complete. The whole room—host, guests, musicians, even waiters—one and all were literally dumbfounded at the extraordinary beauty of her face and costume, to say nothing of her jewels. Such an entrancing spectacle was without parallel in a ballroom in Innsbruck; and when she left, before the entertainment was over, all the life, the light, the gaiety went with her.
But it was at the third ball, to which the same equipage surreptitiously bore her, that Madame Mildau's enjoyment and triumphs reached their zenith; and it was only towards the close of that entertainment—when she felt, by that revelation of instinct which never deceives women on similar occasions, that it was time to depart; that the brilliancy of her eyes, no less than the beauty of her dress, was fading; that her lips, parched with fatigue, had lost that humid red which rendered them so pretty and inviting, and that the dust had taken the beautiful gloss off her hair—that she experienced, for the first time, a sentiment of uneasiness in reviewing the rashness of her conduct. How was it possible, she asked herself, to prevent a casual acquaintance—her friends she could warn—letting out in conversation before her husband that she had been to these balls. And supposing he thus got to know of her deceit, what then?
This idea—the idea of being found out—with all its consequences, rose before her. Her exhausted imagination could find nothing to oppose it, nothing to relieve the feeling of depression which took possession of her, and she almost felt remorse when she threw herself into her carriage. It was a very dark night, cold and windy, and she was only too thankful to nestle close into the soft cushions at her back, and bury her face in the warm fur of her costly wrap. For some minutes she remained absorbed in thought; but it was not long before the monotonous rumble, rumble of the carriage produced a sensation of drowsiness, from which she was rudely awakened by the sound of a cough. Glancing in the direction from whence it came, to her utmost dismay and astonishment she saw, seated in the opposite corner of the vehicle, a young man of good, if somewhat peculiar appearance, and extremely well dressed. Madame Mildau instantly took in all the disadvantages of her situation, and, overwhelmed by the imprudence of her conduct, exclaimed in a tone in which dignity and terror struggled for mastery, "Sir, what audacity!"
"Yes, indeed, what audacity!" the stranger replied, affecting to be shocked. "What pride! What a love of display!" and he rolled his big eyes at her and bared his teeth.
"But, sir," Madame Mildau cried in horror, concluding that the unknown was a madman, "this is my carriage. I beg you will depart—I beseech you—I command you. I will summon my servants."