"Well! make this sacrifice for me in your turn, not to look at her again,—not to speak to her before to-morrow evening. Promise me, as you have no idea of sleeping, to think of her, of me, and of yourself, all alone, for a few hours, and then again to-morrow morning. You are not to come here before dinner-time. You must not; promise me!"
The Marquis promised and kept his word; but the solitude, the darkness, the pain of not seeing Caroline, and of leaving her surrounded by the notice and homage of others, only increased his impatience, only fed the fire of his passion. Besides, his mother's precautions, although wise in themselves, were of no use to a man who had been reflecting and deciding so long.
Caroline was surprised not to see the Marquis reappear, and was one of the first to withdraw,—trying to persuade herself she had not been mistaken in thinking he would soon recover his self-control. She was, as will be seen, far from suspecting the truth.
Madame d'Arglade had her spies at this ball, and among others a man who desired to marry her, a secretary of legation, who, the next morning, reported to her the great success of the "young lady companion." The devotion of the Marquis had not escaped malevolent eyes, and the diplomatic apprentice had even scented out an interesting conversation between the Marquis and his mother, as they left the room together.
Léonie listened to this report with apparent indifference; but she said to herself it was time to act, and at noon she was inquiring for the Marchioness at the very moment Caroline appeared.
"One minute, my dear friend," said she to Mlle de Saint-Geneix, "let me go in before you do; it is an urgent matter,—a kindness to be done for some poor people who wish to remain unknown."
Once alone with the Marchioness, she apologized for coming to speak about the poor in these days of rejoicing. "They are, on the contrary, the days of the poor," replied the generous lady; "speak. One of my great joys now will be that I can do more good than I could awhile ago."
Léonie had her pretext all prepared. When she had presented her request, and put the Marchioness down on her subscription-list, she pretended that she was in haste to go, so as to be invited to stay a little while. It is useless to relate the skilful turns and tricks by which she maliciously contrived to reach the interesting point of the conversation. These mean-spirited attacks, unhappily too common, will be remembered by all those who have ever felt their cruel effects; and they are very few who have been forgotten by calumny.
They naturally spoke of Gaëtan's happiness and about the perfections of the young Duchess. "What I love most in her," said Léonie, "is that she isn't jealous of any one, not even of—Oh! beg pardon, the name was just going to escape me."
She returned to this subject several times, refusing to mention the name until the Marchioness began to grow uneasy. At last it did escape her, and the name was that of Caroline.