Duroy stepped forward, seeking to impart to his face a look of expressive cordiality, and grasped his host's hand with exaggerated energy. Then, having sat down, he could find nothing to say.
Monsieur de Marelle placed a log upon the fire, and inquired: "Have you been long engaged in journalism?"
"Only a few months."
"Ah! you have got on quickly?"
"Yes, fairly so," and he began to chat at random, without thinking very much about what he was saying, talking of all the trifles customary among men who do not know one another. He was growing seasoned now, and thought the situation a very amusing one. He looked at Monsieur de Marelle's serious and respectable face, with a temptation to laugh, as he thought: "I have cuckolded you, old fellow, I have cuckolded you." A vicious, inward satisfaction stole over him—the satisfaction of a thief who has been successful, and is not even suspected—a delicious, roguish joy. He suddenly longed to be the friend of this man, to win his confidence, to get him to relate the secrets of his life.
Madame de Marelle came in suddenly, and having taken them in with a smiling and impenetrable glance, went toward Duroy, who dared not, in the presence of her husband, kiss her hand as he always did. She was calm, and light-hearted as a person accustomed to everything, finding this meeting simple and natural in her frank and native trickery. Laurine appeared, and went and held up her forehead to George more quietly than usual, her father's presence intimidating her. Her mother said to her: "Well, you don't call him Pretty-boy to-day." And the child blushed as if a serious indiscretion had been committed, a thing that ought not to have been mentioned, revealed, an intimate and, so to say, guilty secret of her heart laid bare.
When the Forestiers arrived, all were alarmed at the condition of Charles. He had grown frightfully thin and pale within a week, and coughed incessantly. He stated, besides, that he was leaving for Cannes on the following Thursday, by the doctor's imperative orders. They left early, and Duroy said, shaking his head: "I think he is very bad. He will never make old bones."
Madame de Marelle said, calmly: "Oh! he is done for. There is a man who was lucky in finding the wife he did."
Duroy asked: "Does she help him much?"
"She does everything. She is acquainted with everything that is going on; she knows everyone without seeming to go and see anybody; she obtains what she wants as she likes. Oh! she is keen, clever, and intriguing as no one else is. She is a treasure for anyone wanting to get on."