"Perhaps the countess loved her husband," suggested the young Mademoiselle de Belloeil who sat near the table, bending over some crochet work, but at the same time lending an ear to the conversation. "How could she?" said Diane, "he was so cold, so austere, and so dreadfully uninteresting, and then I happen to know she did not, because"-- "Because she loved another gentleman," said the chevalier, completing the sentence with a laugh. "Under the circumstances I do not know whether I admire the countess's loyalty in following her husband to prison, or condemn her cruelty in leaving a lover to pine outside its walls." "She was always a faithful wife, I would have you understand, you wicked old Chevalier de Creux!" exclaimed Madame de Rémur, looking up at him as he leaned over the back of her chair. "Perhaps the lover may be confined in the prison also," suggested the philosopher, who had also been a silent listener to the dialogue. "More than likely," assented the chevalier dryly. "Whether he were here or not," said madame decidedly, "she would have done the same." "Here is the Count de Blois," said the chevalier; "let us put the case before him." "Oh, you men," laughed Madame de Rémur. "I will not accept the verdict of the best of you. But the count is accompanied by the poet; let us get him to recite us some verses." And she tossed her fancywork upon the table at her side. Monsieur de Blois, with his arm through the poet's, bowed low before them. The count had been in the prison for over a year, and the poor gentleman's wardrobe had begun to show the effect of long service. "They have evidently forgotten my existence entirely," he had said pathetically one morning to a friend who found him washing his only fine shirt in the prison-yard fountain. "When this shirt is worn out, I shall make a demand to be sent to the guillotine from very modesty." A few days later he had received a couple of shirts and a note by the hand of the jailer. "Dear de Blois," the letter had read. "I am called, and shall not need these. If they prevent you from carrying out your threat of the other morning, I shall go with a lighter heart. "Yours, V. de K." "De Blois!" said the chevalier, drawing the count away from the table of Mademoiselle de Belloeil, "you are called to decide a point of the greatest delicacy." The count put his glass to his eye as if to look at the chevalier and the philosopher, but in reality he only saw Mademoiselle de Belloeil bending over her embroidery. "If a lady," continued the chevalier, his bright eyes twinkling, "voluntarily puts herself into a prison where are confined both her husband and her lover, what credit does she deserve for her action? Can it be called self-sacrifice?"