Gabrielle stared at the automaton. Good heavens! His uncongenial presence. Was he so blind as not to perceive how she hungered for it? A burning reproach was on her lips, but found no voice; for somehow, seeing him sit there so straight and cold and self-complacent, her courage oozed away. "Do what you choose." He continued with bland indifference. "I was never jealous of your entourage, because I liked you to enjoy the meed of admiration that is your due, and know that you are to be trusted even in so perilous a vortex as Versailles. For reasons with which I need not trouble you, I prefer myself to remain here for a while, with your permission; but seem to see that you are weary of playing the chatelaine. Is it so? Would you like to return to Paris. Please yourself. You will admit that I give you the completest liberty." The heart of the poor wife sank low. For what crime was she condemned to love an icicle? If he would only find fault, or discover a grievance, or even wax wroth without a cause, and smite her! Each calm and measured sentence as he sat, with the finger-tips of one hand poised accurately on those of the other, was like the prick of a steel stiletto. His gaze was fixed on a tree a long way off. He could not even trouble to look at her. Sighing wearily, she murmured, "Completest liberty, no doubt. I and the children are to go away and leave you here alone?" Clovis moved his gaze to another tree and cleared his throat. "Not unless you wish it," he said, "but something has happened that is a little embarrassing." "Any trouble? Am I not here to share it." "Scarcely a trouble--an inconvenience only, which you may object to share," her husband answered, smiling. "Could you brook other inmates?" "Other inmates! What can you mean?' "As you know, though you have never seen them, I have two half-brothers. They are inseparable--quite pattern brothers--the one brilliantly clever, the other his admiring shadow. The Abbe Pharamond, the younger one, would be welcomed in any society on account of his sparkling talent; but he has preferred to shine alone at Toulouse, rather than consent to be a unit in the system of stars at Paris. He has got into trouble, and writes to ask for an asylum for himself and Phebus." "What trouble?" "A too pungent epigram followed by a fatal duel, makes it convenient to seek eclipse. In six months the affair will have blown over. You would be sure to like the abbe, if you met him; while as for poor dear Phebus, the chevalier, as he is called in the south, he is fat and somnolent, and would not hurt a fly."