It was not the virtuous who despised her, but she who despised the virtuous. Honest women were the chosen mark for her ridicule. People in Paris knew all the details of her brazen, infamous life. Very few knew the history of her death-bed. But the priest who shrived her and the nursing sister who watched her last hours could have told a story to make even Frivolity’s hair stand on end. ‘It was a short life, but a merry one,’ thought La Chicot. ‘How well I remember her the winter the lake in the Bois was frozen, and there was skating by torchlight! She used to drive a sledge covered all over with silver bells, and she used to skate dressed in dark red velvet and sable. The crowd stood on one side to let her pass, as if she had been an empress.’ Then her thoughts took another turn. ‘If I left him, he would divorce me and marry that other woman,’ she said to herself. ‘Who is she, I wonder? Where did he see her? Not at the theatre. He cares for no one there. I have watched him too closely to be deceived in that.’ Then she half-filled a tumbler with brandy, and flavoured it with water, in order to delude herself with the idea that she was drinking brandy and water; and then, lapsing into a state of semi-intoxication--a dreamy, half-consciousness, in which life, seen hazily, took a brighter hue--she flung aside her mirror, and threw herself half-dressed upon the bed. Jack Chicot, who had taken to coming home long after midnight, slept on the sofa in a little third room, where he worked. There was not much chance of his seeing the jewels. He and his wife were as nearly parted as two people could be, living in the same house. La Chicot contemplated the diamonds, and abandoned herself to much the same train of thought, for several nights; and now came the last night of the week which Mr. Lemuel had allowed for reflection. To-morrow she was to give him his answer. He was waiting for her at the stage-door when she came out. Desrolles, her usual escort, was not in attendance. ‘Zaïre, I have been thinking of you every hour since last we spoke together,’ Joseph Lemuel began, delighted at finding her alone. ‘You are as difficult to approach as a princess of the blood royal.’ ‘Why should I hold myself cheaper than a princess?’ she asked, insolently. ‘I am an honest woman.’ ‘You are handsomer than any princess in Europe,’ he said. ‘But you ought to compassionate an adorer who has waited so long and so patiently. When am I to have your answer? Is it to be yes? You cannot be so cruel as to say no. My lawyer has drawn up the deed of settlement. I only wait your word to execute it.’ ‘You are very generous,’ said La Chicot, scornfully, ‘or very obstinate. If I run away with you and my husband gets a divorce, will you marry me?’