Yes, she had certainly flown away somewhere on leaving the table. The company suddenly recollected her, and everybody asked for her. Steiner, who for some seconds had been uneasy on her account, asked Vandeuvres about the old gentleman, for he, too, had disappeared. But the count reassured him—he had just brought the old gentleman back. He was a stranger, whose name it was useless to mention. Suffice it to say that he was a very rich man who was quite pleased to pay for suppers! Then as Nana was once more being forgotten, Vandeuvres saw Daguenet looking out of an open door and beckoning to him. And in the bedroom he found the mistress of the house sitting up, white-lipped and rigid, while Daguenet and Georges stood gazing at her with an alarmed expression. “What IS the matter with you?” he asked in some surprise. She neither answered nor turned her head, and he repeated his question. “Why, this is what’s the matter with me,” she cried out at length; “I won’t let them make bloody sport of me!” Thereupon she gave vent to any expression that occurred to her. Yes, oh yes, SHE wasn’t a ninny—she could see clearly enough. They had been making devilish light of her during supper and saying all sorts of frightful things to show that they thought nothing of her! A pack of sluts who weren’t fit to black her boots! Catch her bothering herself again just to be badgered for it after! She really didn’t know what kept her from chucking all that dirty lot out of the house! And with this, rage choked her and her voice broke down in sobs. “Come, come, my lass, you’re drunk,” said Vandeuvres, growing familiar. “You must be reasonable.” No, she would give her refusal now; she would stay where she was. “I am drunk—it’s quite likely! But I want people to respect me!” For a quarter of an hour past Daguenet and Georges had been vainly beseeching her to return to the drawing room. She was obstinate, however; her guests might do what they liked; she despised them too much to come back among them. No, she never would, never. They might tear her in pieces before she would leave her room! “I ought to have had my suspicions,” she resumed. “It’s that cat of a Rose who’s got the plot up! I’m certain Rose’ll have stopped that respectable woman coming whom I was expecting tonight.”