"Oh! he'll catch her!" resumed Mouret; "he knows all their tricks." But his voice trembled and he laughed in an awkward manner. Denise and Henriette, whom he had ceased to watch, were at last passing behind him, after having had a great deal of trouble to get out of the crush. He turned round suddenly, and bowed to his customer with the discreet air of a friend who does not desire to compromise a woman by stopping her in a crowd of people. But Henriette, on the alert, had at once perceived the look with which he had first enveloped Denise. It must be this girl--thought she--yes, this was the rival she had been curious to come and see. In the mantle department, the young ladies were fast losing their heads. Two of them had fallen ill, and Madame Frédéric, the second-hand, had quietly given notice the previous day, and repaired to the cashier's office to take her money, leaving The Ladies' Paradise at a minute's notice, just as The Ladies' Paradise itself discharged its employees. Ever since the morning, in spite of the feverish rush of business, every one had been talking of this affair. Clara, still kept in the department by Mouret's caprice, thought it grand. Marguerite related how exasperated Bourdoncle was; whilst Madame Aurélie, greatly vexed, declared that Madame Frédéric ought at least to have informed her, for such hypocrisy had never before been heard of. Although Madame Frédéric had never confided in any one, she was suspected of having relinquished her position to marry the proprietor of some baths in the neighbourhood of the Halles. "It's a travelling cloak that madame desires, I believe?" inquired Denise of Madame Desforges, after offering her a chair. "Yes," curtly replied the latter, who had made up her mind to be impolite. The new decorations of the department were of a rich severity: on all sides were high carved oak cupboards with mirrors filling the whole space of their panels, while a red carpet muffled the continued tramping of the customers. Whilst Denise went off to fetch the cloaks, Madame Desforges, who was looking round, perceived her face in a glass; and she continued contemplating herself. Was she getting old then that she should be cast aside for the first-comer? The glass reflected the entire department with all its commotion, but she only beheld her own pale face; she did not hear Clara behind her, relating to Marguerite a story of Madame Frédéric's mysterious goings-on, the manner in which she went out of her way night and morning so as to pass through the Passage Choiseul, and thus make people believe that she lived over the water. "Here are our latest designs," said Denise. "We have them in several colours."