And, snatching it from her, he tore off the envelope. But he had scarcely looked over it, when he crushed it in his hand, exclaiming, “It is monstrous! It is a mean, infamous treason!” He was interrupted by a violent ringing of the door-bell. “Who can it be?” stammered Mme. Cadelle. “I know who it is,” replied the former cashier. “Open, open quick.” She obeyed; and almost at once a woman walked into the parlor, wearing a cheap, black woolen dress. With a sudden gesture, she threw off her veil; and M. de Tregars recognized the Baroness de Thaller. “Leave us!” she said to Mme. Zelie, in a tone which one would hardly dare to assume towards a bar-maid. The other felt indignant. “What, what!” she began. “I am in my own house here.” “Leave us!” repeated M. Favoral with a threatening gesture. “Go, go!” She went out but only to take refuge by the side of M. de Tregars. “You hear how they treat me,” she said in a hoarse voice. He made no answer. All his attention was centred upon the parlor. The Baroness de Thaller and the former cashier were standing opposite each other, like two adversaries about to fight a duel. “I have just read your letter,” began Vincent Favoral. Coldly the baroness said, “Ah!” “It is a joke, I suppose.” “Not at all.” “You refuse to go with me?” “Positively.” “And yet it was all agreed upon. I have acted wholly under your urgent, pressing advice. How many times have you repeated to me that to live with your husband had become an intolerable torment to you! How many times have you sworn to me that you wished to be mine alone, begging me to procure a large sum of money, and to fly with you!” “I was in earnest at the time. I have discovered, at the last moment, that it would be impossible for me thus to abandon my country, my daughter, my friends.” “We can take Cesarine with us.” “Do not insist.” He was looking at her with a stupid, gloomy gaze. “Then,” he stammered, “those tears, those prayers, those oaths!” “I have reflected.” “It is not possible! If you spoke the truth, you would not be here.” “I am here to make you understand that we must give up projects which cannot be realized. There are some social conventionalities which cannot be torn up.” As if he scarcely understood what she said, he repeated, “Social conventionalities!” And suddenly falling at Mme. de Thaller’s feet, his head thrown back, and his hands clasped together, “You lie!” he said. “Confess that you lie, and that it is a final trial which you are imposing upon me. Or else have you, then, never loved me? That’s impossible! I would not believe you if you were to say so. A woman who does not love a man cannot be to him what you have been to me: she does not give herself up thus so joyously and so completely. Have you, then, forgotten every thing? Is it possible that you do not remember those divine evenings in the Rue de Cirque?--those nights, the mere thought of which fires my brain, and consumes my blood.”