"Look here," he exclaimed, "you will never be anything better than a backbiter and selfish. What maddens you is my shaking myself free from you. You don't care for the morality of the thing, but for your pocket. You thought I should make a good fortune-leaving uncle. I love my niece, I know; but I love Tekla, my dear little baby daughter, better. I shall marry Lise whether you like it or not. As for you, mother, you know my affection for you. It won't change, you may be sure, because I am not living with you. From this night I shall live here no longer. I will give you timely notice of my marriage, and I hope, in spite of my sweet sister-in-law, that you will be present at it."
Leaving then his mother and Mme. Frantz, who had not looked for such determination in him, Paul hurried to the ex-Princess Olsdorf to tell her what had passed.
Chance had prepared for him in the Rue Lafitte an unexpected and fateful meeting.
The door had been opened for him, and, without asking any question of the footman, he was passing through the anteroom to the room where he expected to find Lise, when the servant stopped him, saying:
"Pardon me, monsieur, but Madame la Princess is with her mother."
"Her mother!" exclaimed Paul, in surprise.
He remembered suddenly that he too, as well as Lise, had ignored rather too much the woman whose son-in-law he was to be.
Left by her daughter in complete ignorance of the conjugal drama in which Lise was the heroine, Mme. Podoi had only heard of the divorce at St. Petersburg as everybody else had, through the talk that the scandal gave rise to. The news had come upon her like a clap of thunder. It was the destruction of her dream of ambition, the realization of which she had striven for so ardently; and, though she knew that the decree of divorce had been pronounced against Prince Olsdorf, she suspected a mystery and wished to fathom it.
Not saying a word to anybody of her intended journey, she had left St. Petersburg, and suddenly appeared before her daughter in Paris.
She had been there but a short time when Paul called. There had been a violent scene between the two women.