This is what had occurred: Madame de Camors, during her stay in Paris, had gone, as was her custom, to visit her aunt, Madame de la Roche-Jugan. Their intercourse had always been very constrained. Neither their characters nor their religion coincided. Madame de Camors contented herself with not liking her aunt, but Madame de la Roche-Jugan hated her niece. She found a good occasion to prove this, and did not lose it. They had not seen each other since the General's death. This event, which should have caused Madame de la Roche-Jugan to reproach herself, had simply exasperated her. Her bad action had recoiled upon herself. The death of M. Campvallon had finally destroyed her last hopes, which she had believed she could have founded on the anger and desperation of the old man. Since that time she was animated against her nephew and the Marquise with the rage of one of the Furies. She learned through Vautrot that M. de Camors had been in the chamber of Madame de Campvallon the night of the General's death. On this foundation of truth she did not fear to frame the most odious suspicions; and Vautrot, baffled like her in his vengeance and in his envy, had aided her. A few sinister rumors, escaping apparently from this source, had even crept at this time into Parisian society. M. de Camors and Madame de Campvallon, suspecting that they had been betrayed a second time by Madame de la Roche-Jugan, had broken with her; and she could presume that, should she present herself at the door of the Marquise, orders would have been given not to admit her. This affront made her angrier still. She was still a prey to the violence of her wrath when she received a visit from Madame de Camors. She affected to make the General's death the theme of conversation, shed a few tears over her old friend, and kissed the hand of her niece with a burst of tenderness. "My poor little thing!" she said to her; "it is for you also I weep--for you will yet be more unhappy than heretofore, if that can be possible." "I do not understand you, Madame," answered the young woman, coldly. "If you do not understand me, so much the better," replied Madame de la Roche-Jugan, with a shade of bitterness; then, after a moment's pause--" Listen, my dear! this is a duty of conscience which I comply with. You see, an honest creature like you merits a better fate; and your mother too, who is also a dupe. That man would deceive the good God. In the name of my family, I feel bound to ask your pardon for both of them." "I repeat, Madame, that I do not understand you." "But it is impossible, my child--come!--it is impossible that all this time you have suspected nothing." "I suspect nothing, Madame," said Madame de Camors, "because I know all." "Ah!" continued Madame de la Roche-Jugan, dryly; "if this be so, I have nothing to say. But there are persons, in that case, who can accommodate their consciences to very strange things."