Of course, when the story reached them, the Montbazon party came trundling over in the shanderydan, with goggling eyes and ears acock, to inquire into the extraordinary tale. Clovis received them with scant courtesy, but the old baroness was not to be put off with a cold shoulder, and Angelique took little trouble to cloak her suspicions. What could madame have been doing--navigating the Loire in the middle of the night, and tumbling overboard? Why choose so strange an hour for a solitary excursion, and why fall out of so clumsy and broad-beamed a craft? Could the dear marquis explain? The dear marquis became testy, and, shrugging his shoulders, advised the ladies to visit madame who was in bed, but well enough to tell them all about it. The ladies sat on either side of the great catafalque, under shadow of the blue velvet curtains, and sniffed at one another with meaning across the counterpane. Cross-questioned by the baron as they drove home, the baroness pursed her lips in ominous silence, while Angelique remarked, "If with those sad eyes welling with tears, she persists that she is happy, and vows that on that night her foot slipped, in courtesy we must pretend to believe her." To which the baron pertinently replied, "Foot slipped, indeed! and in the middle of the river, too. What was it doing on the gunwale?" Clovis knew that the de Vaux family would spread damaging reports, but he had yet another cause for anxiety. A certain remark had been dropped by Mademoiselle Brunelle as the two were carrying their burthen to the salon, which was like a douche of icy water. "If he had let her drown, you would be free!" What an atrociously cold-blooded sentiment from the lips of the good-natured Aglaé! As to this the marquis's conscience had no suggestion to make, for it had never entered his head to desire his wife's demise.