"My dear Ernestine, allow me to introduce M. le Marquis de Maillefort, one of my particular friends." After bowing to the young girl, who returned the bow with an embarrassed air, the hunchback said, with formal politeness: "I am delighted, mademoiselle, to have still another reason for often coming to Madame de la Rochaigue's house." And as if he considered himself released from the necessity of paying any further attention to the orphan by this commonplace remark, he bowed again, and then took a seat beside the baroness, while her husband tried to conceal his ill-temper by sipping his coffee very slowly, and Helena took Ernestine a few steps aside, under pretext of calling her attention to the plants in a jardiniere. The marquis, without seeming to pay the slightest attention to Ernestine, never once lost sight of them. He had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, and he hoped to catch a few words of the conversation between the devotee and the orphan, while he chatted gaily with Madame de la Rochaigue, both of them endeavouring to conceal their real thoughts under the airiest persiflage, and to try and discover what the other was driving at, in vulgar parlance. The frivolous character of such a conversation favoured the hunchback's intentions, so, while he listened to Madame de la Rochaigue with a distrait ear, he listened eagerly with the other to Ernestine, the baron, and Helena. The devotee and her brother, believing the marquis absorbed in his conversation with Madame de la Rochaigue, reminded the orphan, in the course of their conversation, of the promise she had made to accompany Helena to church the next morning at nine o'clock, and also to go with the baron a couple of days afterwards to view the wonders of the Luxembourg. Though there was nothing extraordinary in these plans, M. de Maillefort's distrust of the Rochaigue family was so great that he deemed it advisable to neglect no detail, however insignificant it might appear, so he noted these facts carefully, even while replying with his accustomed wit to Madame de la Rochaigue's commonplaces. The hunchback's attention had been divided in this way for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Helena make a whispered remark to Ernestine, accompanied by a glance at Madame de la Rochaigue, as if to say that it was not worth while to interrupt her conversation, after which the orphan, Helena, and the baron left the room.