"Dear de Blois," the letter had read. "I am called, and shall not need these. If they prevent you from carrying out your threat of the other morning, I shall go with a lighter heart.
"Yours, V. de K."
"De Blois!" said the chevalier, drawing the count away from the table of Mademoiselle de Bellœil, "you are called to decide a point of the greatest delicacy."
The count put his glass to his eye as if to look at the chevalier and the philosopher, but in reality he only saw Mademoiselle de Bellœil bending over her embroidery.
"If a lady," continued the chevalier, his bright eyes twinkling, "voluntarily puts herself into a prison where are confined both her husband and her lover, what credit does she deserve for her action? Can it be called self-sacrifice?"
Before replying, the count looked attentively at the group before him: at the philosopher's impenetrable countenance; at the chevalier's quizzical and wrinkled brown physiognomy; then at Madame de Rémur's handsome face, and lastly and most tenderly at the drooping eyelids of the delicate Mademoiselle de Bellœil.
"She would be twice revered," replied de Blois.
Mademoiselle de Bellœil's needle stopped in its click-click.
"Why so, monsieur le comte?" inquired the philosopher. "If she has a double motive for the sacrifice, should not the honor of it be only half as great?"
"She should receive credit for her loyalty to the husband whom she had sworn to obey, and homage for her devotion to the lover on whom by nature she has placed her affections," replied the count, bowing to Madame de Rémur, while he noted with a certain satisfaction the smile of approval on the lips of Mademoiselle de Bellœil.
"And no one has said that she has a lover," declared Madame de Rémur warmly.