The footman announced Monsieur Mouret and Monsieur de Vallagnosc. Henriette could not restrain a movement of anger. Why had he not come alone? He must have gone for his friend, fearful of a _tête-à-tête_ with her. However, she smiled and shook hands with both men. "What a stranger you are becoming! I say the same for you, Monsieur de Vallagnosc." Her great grief was that she was getting stout, and she now squeezed herself into the tightest fitting black silk dresses, in order to conceal her increasing corpulency. Yet her pretty head, with its dark hair, preserved its pleasing shapeliness. And Mouret could familiarly tell her, as he enveloped her with a look: "It's useless to ask after your health. You are as fresh as a rose." "Oh! I'm almost too well," she replied. "Besides, I might have died; you would have known nothing about it." She was examining him also, and thought that he looked tired and nervous, his eyes heavy, his complexion livid. "Well," she resumed, in a tone which she endeavoured to render agreeable, "I cannot return your compliment; you don't look at all well this evening." "Overwork!" remarked Vallagnosc. Mouret shrugged his shoulders, without replying. He had just caught sight of Bouthemont, and nodded to him in a friendly way. During their closer intimacy he himself had been wont to take him away from the department, and bring him to Henriette's during the busiest moments of the afternoon. But times had changed; and he now said to him in an undertone: "You went away very early. They noticed your departure, and are furious about it." He referred to Bourdoncle and the other persons who had an interest in the business, as if he were not himself the master. "Ah!" murmured Bouthemont, anxiously. "Yes, I want to talk to you. Wait for me, we'll leave together." Henriette had now sat down again; and, while listening to Vallagnosc, who was announcing that Madame de Boves would probably pay her a visit, she did not take her eyes off Mouret. The latter, again silent, gazed at the furniture, and seemed to be looking for something on the ceiling. Then, as she laughingly complained that she now only had gentlemen at her four o'clock tea, he so far forgot himself as to blurt out: "I expected to find Baron Hartmann here." Henriette turned pale. No doubt she well knew that he merely came to her house to meet the baron; still he might have avoided throwing his indifference in her face like that. At that moment the door had opened and the footman was standing behind her. When she had interrogated him by a sign, the servant leant over and said in a very low tone: "It's for that mantle. Madame wished me to let her know. The young woman is there." Henriette at once raised her voice, so as to be heard; and all her jealous suffering found relief in these scornfully harsh words: "She can wait!" "Shall I show her into madame's dressing-room?" asked the servant. "No, no. Let her stay in the ante-room!"