“I know you to be so fickle,” replied Steinbock. “Did I not hear you talking to Lisbeth of that Brazilian, Baron Montes?” “Do you want to rid me of him?” “It would be the only way to hinder his seeing you,” said the ex-sculptor. “Let me tell you, my darling--for I tell you everything,” said Valerie--“I was saving him up for a husband.--The promises I have made to that man!--Oh, long before I knew you,” said she, in reply to a movement from Wenceslas. “And those promises, of which he avails himself to plague me, oblige me to get married almost secretly; for if he should hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that--that would kill me.” “Oh, as to that!” said Steinbock, with a scornful expression, which conveyed that such a danger was small indeed for a woman beloved by a Pole. And in the matter of valor there is no brag or bravado in a Pole, so thoroughly and seriously brave are they all. “And that idiot Crevel,” she went on, “who wants to make a great display and indulge his taste for inexpensive magnificence in honor of the wedding, places me in difficulties from which I see no escape.” Could Valerie confess to this man, whom she adored, that since the discomfiture of Baron Hulot, this Baron Henri Montes had inherited the privilege of calling on her at all hours of the day or night; and that, notwithstanding her cleverness, she was still puzzled to find a cause of quarrel in which the Brazilian might seem to be solely in the wrong? She knew the Baron’s almost savage temper--not unlike Lisbeth’s--too well not to quake as she thought of this Othello of Rio de Janeiro. As the carriage drove up, Steinbock released Valerie, for his arm was round her waist, and took up a newspaper, in which he was found absorbed. Valerie was stitching with elaborate care at the slippers she was working for Crevel. “How they slander her!” whispered Lisbeth to Crevel, pointing to this picture as they opened the door. “Look at her hair--not in the least tumbled. To hear Victorin, you might have expected to find two turtle-doves in a nest.” “My dear Lisbeth,” cried Crevel, in his favorite position, “you see that to turn Lucretia into Aspasia, you have only to inspire a passion!” “And have I not always told you,” said Lisbeth, “that women like a burly profligate like you?” “And she would be most ungrateful, too,” said Crevel; “for as to the money I have spent here, Grindot and I alone can tell!” And he waved a hand at the staircase. In decorating this house, which Crevel regarded as his own, Grindot had tried to compete with Cleretti, in whose hands the Duc d’Herouville had placed Josepha’s villa. But Crevel, incapable of understanding art, had, like all sordid souls, wanted to spend a certain sum fixed beforehand. Grindot, fettered by a contract, had found it impossible to embody his architectural dream.