"I want to talk to you about affairs," Aglaé began. "Since you do not ask me to sit, I will choose a chair myself." So saying, she subsided into the most inviting fauteuil and assumed a pose of studied insolence. "I congratulate madame on her humility," observed the governess, in her rolling bass, with a condescending headshake. "The Christian virtues are rare, alas, just now in persons of your birth and breeding." "To what do I owe this visit?" demanded the marquise, stretching her hand towards the bell-rope. "Do not ring; you will regret it," returned the other. "For all our sakes, I would not have you despised by the domestics, if I can help it. You are so apathetic to the stirring history which is being made under your very nose that I am compelled to enlighten your lamentably darkened mind. It is quite on the cards that we may find it convenient to leave Lorge until the storm that threatens is past. By the dear marquis's wish I and the sweet children will accompany him into temporary banishment, and it becomes necessary to know what madame will do in that contingency. Of course she is a free agent to go where she pleases, and the marquis is too good and generous not to see that she is well provided for. It is best for madame to know that her presence with us would, for various reasons, be inconvenient--calculated, indeed, to produce scandal, which, for the sake of monsieur and the little ones, madame will desire to avoid." What snake was there rustling beneath the leaves? "Is this an ambassage from the Marquis de Gange?" enquired Gabrielle. "His interests and mine have become identical," drawled mademoiselle, "as madame is no doubt aware, and when I speak it is for both." "I will go to him myself!" exclaimed the outraged marquise with trembling lips, "He should know that betwixt himself and his wife no ambassador is needed." Aglaé raised her bushy brows and critically contemplating the aspen figure before her, laughed. "How lamentable that madame should take no interest in what is passing," she exclaimed. "She knows so little of her husband as to be unaware that he has gone to Blois on business and will not return until to-morrow." Could Clovis really have been base enough to confide such a mission as this to the governess, running off meanwhile himself like a coward? Was he bent on withering every leaf of her true love that still struggled for existence? She could scarce believe it even now. "Madame had better listen and be calm," suggested Aglaé. "It is always better to be calm." "Wherever they may go, my place is with my husband and my children," the marquise replied with dignity. "Cannot madame perceive a troublesome _nuance_, which, in another place, might make her position uncomfortable?" "Enough of this impertinence," returned the other, sternly. "You forget that you are my servant, to be dismissed at pleasure. Speak plainly and briefly, or I will have you ejected by the valets."