Blassemare had started to his feet, very much astonished; his cheek tingling, his self-love stung to the quick. But he was too experienced in such affairs to indulge any tragical emotions on the occasion. He stared at her for a minute, with an expression of absurd bewilderment. There was no very graceful _exit_ from the undignified predicament to which he had, like a simpleton, reduced himself. Recovering his self-possession, however, he broke into a cold laugh, and said-- "Madame, I have misunderstood you with a vengeance; I pray you believe that you have misunderstood _me_. We now, however, thoroughly understand one another. I keep your little secret on condition that you keep mine." Lucille deigned no answer; but the compact had, it seemed, been silently ratified by her, for Le Prun and Blassemare continued to be the best friends imaginable. Blassemare was not vindictive, but he _was_ exquisitely vain. He had a good-humored turn for mischief, too; and, notwithstanding the repulse he had experienced, or perhaps, such is human perversity--_in consequence_ of it--he was more than ever resolved to pursue his guilty designs upon the heart of Madame Le Prun. His hands were, therefore, tolerably full; for he had not only this little affair to attend to, but to exercise his vigilance to prevent De Secqville's hearing of his breach of faith, and at the same time to confirm and exasperate, in furtherance of his own schemes, the suspicions of Monsieur Le Prun. This latter task circumstances rendered an easy one, and Blassemare executed it without giving any definite direction to Le Prun's inflamed jealousy. So far, indeed, was he from suspecting the identity of the criminal, that he brought De Secqville two or three times to sup at the Chateau des Anges, an act of temerity which excited Blassemare's anxiety and vigilance. That gentleman had therefore kept so close and constant a watch upon the handsome Marquis, that he had not, upon any of these occasions, an opportunity of exchanging a single sentence with Madame Le Prun.