When the wan marquise knocked and gently entered the sanctum, where she should have known there was no place for her, the ire of Aglae was kindled, and sulkily regarding the invader, she assumed her most offensive attitude. What could the abject, grovelling, brow-beaten creature want, coming here to bother? How dared she take such a liberty? She deserved a setting down--a drubbing. Here was a chance for the lash! The mere sight of the wide opened violet eyes of the marquise, with their eloquent depth of ineffable sadness, acted on her nerves as the flag of the toreador does upon the bull. We must not blame her, for those who have struggled up somehow without educated help, must judge for themselves according to their lights, and they are beset with insoluble riddles, as ill-cultured fields are choked with weeds. To women such as Aglae, true pride is an unknown quantity. Instead of considering it as an organ of extremest delicacy, with ramifications as minute and various as that most amazing of creations, the nerve system--she, like others of her kidney, understood nothing more than an aggressive haughtiness, with an accompaniment of sledge hammers. To her, the refined pride which can afford to pass slights unnoticed and ignored impertinence, was a mystery which might not be deciphered. Gabrielle--so misread by Aglae--had bestirred herself to achieve an object, and was prepared to forgive and obliterate the ugly past. The pugnacious and low-souled Aglae could only perceive a lady of high rank, who, out of cowardice, abdicated her position to grovel like a beggar in the dirt. Such an one obviously merited castigation; deserved to be rudely shown that being so mean-spirited she should cower into a corner and hide away her shame. This was the occasion for judicious pin-sticking. The alliance demanded an operation. What would the abbe say, who had prated so seraphically about loyalty, if he came to know that his ally and his recalcitrant lady love had made a compact under the rose? Oh, dear no! A reconciliation between the marquise and her governess would never do at all! A consummation injudicious and undesirable. The purveyor of impossible theories must be well-rapped on the knuckles. The cheek that was turned to the smiter must be soundly thwacked to prevent a recurrence in the future of ill-judged and degrading mawkishness. Aglae, therefore, on the advent of the conciliatory marquise, made a pettish movement of studied impertinence, and yawned slowly in her face like a dyspeptic hippopotamus. "What's that you are bringing me?" she grunted. "You know that I don't want to be worried with you? A present? From you? Oh dear! How you annoy me! As if I wished for your present!" Nothing daunted, Gabrielle held out the olive-branch. "It is a bracelet my father gave me," she said, calmly, "and I would like you to wear it, that you may be assured each time you look on it, that I bear no malice for your roughness."