“Then I am to forgive you?” she asked, with a smile.
“But you will marry, all the same?” asked the Baron, in an agony of jealousy.
“Eighty thousand francs a year!” said she, with almost comical enthusiasm. “And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!”
“Ah! I understand,” said Montes.
“Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understanding,” said she.
And she departed triumphant.
“I have no scruples,” thought the Baron, standing transfixed for a few minutes. “What! That woman believes she can make use of his passion to be quit of that dolt, as she counted on Marneffe’s decease!—I shall be the instrument of divine wrath.”
Two days later those of du Tillet’s guests who had demolished Madame Marneffe tooth and nail, were seated round her table an hour after she has shed her skin and changed her name for the illustrious name of a Paris mayor. This verbal treason is one of the commonest forms of Parisian levity.
Valerie had had the satisfaction of seeing the Brazilian in the church; for Crevel, now so entirely the husband, had invited him out of bravado. And the Baron’s presence at the breakfast astonished no one. All these men of wit and of the world were familiar with the meanness of passion, the compromises of pleasure.
Steinbock’s deep melancholy—for he was beginning to despise the woman whom he had adored as an angel—was considered to be in excellent taste. The Pole thus seemed to convey that all was at an end between Valerie and himself. Lisbeth came to embrace her dear Madame Crevel, and to excuse herself for not staying to the breakfast on the score of Adeline’s sad state of health.