“Madame la duchesse?”
“A mirror, child!”
Eleonore looked at herself, saw the fine razor-like lines traced on her brow, which disappeared at a little distance; she sighed, and in that sigh she felt she bade adieu to love. A brave thought came into her mind, a manly thought, outside of all the pettiness of women,—a thought which intoxicates for a moment, and which explains, perhaps, the clemency of the Semiramis of Russia when she married her young and beautiful rival to Momonoff.
“Since he has not been faithless, he shall have the girl and her millions,” she thought,—“provided Mademoiselle Mignon is as ugly as he says she is.”
Three raps, circumspectly given, announced the duke, and his wife went herself to the door to let him in.
“Ah! I see you are better, my dear,” he cried, with the counterfeit joy that courtiers assume so readily, and by which fools are so readily taken in.
“My dear Henri,” she answered, “why is it you have not yet obtained that appointment for Melchior,—you who sacrificed so much to the king in taking a ministry which you knew could only last one year.”
The duke glanced at Philoxene, who showed him by an almost imperceptible sign the letter from Havre on the dressing-table.
“You would be terribly bored at Baden and come back at daggers drawn with Melchior,” said the duke.
“Pray why?”