"My instructions are," pursued the solicitor, "to see the dismissed person off the premises, within two hours. In the event of her refusing to go, M. le Marquis is to be informed, that I am to remove Madame la Marquise at once, and that, if she is detained it will be the painful duty of the Maréchal de Brèze to prosecute certain individuals, whom I need not designate, for conspiracy and cruelty. The officers of law at Blois have their instructions. If the dismissed person does not present herself there within a given time to receive her wages, or if I do not arrive in the company of Madame la Marquise, the officers will come here and demand admittance to the premises belonging to the maréchal. I am glad to be informed that madame is universally beloved. A whisper that she received cruel treatment would rouse the province, and this I need scarcely observe, is not the moment for a collision with the _tiers état_." Excellently planned. The abbé, a good critic of such matters, was filled with appreciative admiration, although he was to be one of the sufferers. Aglaé had been guilty of some prodigious blunder for which she was to be justly punished. That was well, for in acting independently of him, she had broken a solemn promise. He also, he admitted inwardly, had not displayed his usual astuteness. Doubtless her intense horror of him had helped to goad the victim to that which he had falsely judged she would never do. Then a sense that she had shaken herself free of him, aroused a new access of impotent fury in his breast. She had defied his hate as well as his love, and he shivered with malignant spite at the idea, that by claiming her father's protection she had baffled him. Clovis felt more angry than ever in his life before. It was a revelation of an unpleasant kind to find himself in leading strings; the state of dependence of which the abbé hinted long ago, to be ordered like a lacquey, to be threatened and browbeaten in the presence of others--he, Marquis de Gange, above all, under the eyes of the affinity, and to be powerless to return blow for blow. To be so degraded and humiliated, and at the instance of his own wife! It was some moments ere he could control the whirlwind of emotions sufficiently to command his voice. "Am I to gather," he at length said, huskily, "that Madame la Marquise requires a separation? I am surprised, for she has never spoken on the subject. What if I refuse, and claim my marital rights?"