She took Desrolles’ arm as if it were an accustomed thing for him to escort her; and they went away together, she talking with considerable animation, and as loud as a lady of the highest rank. ‘Curious,’ thought Edward. ‘Where is the husband all this time?’ The husband was spending his evening at a literary club, of somewhat Bohemian character, where there was wit to cheer the saddened soul, and where the nightly talk was of the wildest, breathing ridicule that spared nothing between heaven and earth, and a deep scorn of fools, and an honest contempt for formalism and veneer of all kinds--for the art that follows the fashion of a day, for the literature that is made to pattern. In such a circle Jack Chicot found temporary oblivion. These riotous assemblies, this strong rush of talk, were to him as the waters of Lethe. CHAPTER XVI. SHALL IT BE ‘YES’ OR ‘NO’? ‘This looks as if he were serious, doesn’t it?’ asked La Chicot. The question was addressed to Mr. Desrolles. The two were standing side by side in the wintry dusk, in front of one of the windows that looked into Cibber Street, contemplating the contents of a jewel-case, which La Chicot held open. Embedded in the white velvet lining there lay a collet necklace of diamonds, each stone as big as a prize pea; such a necklace as Desrolles could not remember to have seen, even in the jewellers’ windows, before which he had sometimes paused out of sheer idleness, to contemplate such finery. ‘Serious!’ he echoed. ‘I told you from the first that Joseph Lemuel was a prince.’ ‘You don’t suppose I am going to keep it?’ said La Chicot. ‘I don’t suppose you, or any other woman, would send it back, if it were a free gift,’ answered Desrolles. ‘It is not a free gift. It is to be mine if I consent to run away from my husband and live in Paris as Mr. Lemuel’s mistress. I am to have a villa at Passy, and fifteen hundred a year.’ ‘Princely!’ exclaimed Desrolles. ‘And I am to leave Jack free to live his own life. Don’t you think he would be glad?’ There was something almost tigerish in the look which emphasised this question. ‘I think that it would not matter one jot to you whether he were glad or sorry. He would make a row, I suppose, but you would be safe on the other side of the Channel.’ ‘He would get a divorce,’ said La Chicot. ‘Your English law breaks a marriage as easily as it makes one. And then he would marry that other woman.’ ‘What other woman?’ ‘I don’t know--but there is another. He owned as much the last time we quarrelled.’ ‘A divorce would make you a great lady. Joseph Lemuel would marry you. The man is your slave; you could twist him round your little finger. And then, instead of your little box at Passy, you might have a mansion in the Champs Elysées, among the ambassadors. You would go to the races in a four-in-hand. You might be the most fashionable woman in Paris.’