“As will have been inferred, Eugenie was better. The nervous depression and weakness had passed away, and, stimulated with this new excitement, she had never looked handsomer than when she consented at last to receive Haverleigh as a guest at her house. He had not seen her for weeks, or rather months; for since the time she left Chateau d’Or, until the day she visited Fred at the Louvre, he had not so much as heard the sound of her voice, and this long separation from her, and seeming indifference on her part, had revived his old passion for her ten-fold, and when at last she wrote, ‘Come and dine with me this evening,’ he felt as elated and delighted as the bashful lover who goes for his first visit to his _fiancee_. “He found her waiting for him, dressed with elegant simplicity, and looking so fresh and young that he went forward eagerly to meet her, with his usual gush of tenderness, but she stepped backward from him, with something in her manner which kept him in check so that he only raised her hand to his lips, and then stood looking at her and marveling at her changed demeanor. And yet in most points she was not changed; she would not suffer him to touch her, and she compelled him to treat her with a respect he had not been accustomed to pay her in private; but otherwise she was the same brilliant, fascinating woman, bewildering him with her beauty and intoxicating him with her wit and sharp repartees. “For the _le petite madame_ and _la petite garcon_ she made many inquiries, expressing a strong desire to see them, and telling him that as soon as the weather was more favorable she meant to go down to Chateau d’Or for a little visit. To this Haverleigh assented, for he was perfectly willing that Eugenie and Anna should be on terms of intimacy, especially as the former pretended to believe in the lunacy of the latter, and inquired now very anxiously how she was in her mind since the birth of her child. “‘A little better,’ Haverleigh hoped, and Eugenie continued: “‘I mean some time this summer, say in June, to have her here at my house for a little; the change will do her great good. You are willing, of course, when it will please me so much.’