Madame d'Harville felt her cheeks flush, and her pulse beat rapidly as she indignantly recalled the insulting looks and impertinent remarks of Madame Pipelet. Nor was this all. After receiving from Rodolph an intimation of the danger she was incurring, Clémence had proceeded rapidly towards the fifth floor, as directed, but the position of the staircase was such that, as she hurried on, she perceived M. Charles Robert in his dazzling _robe de chambre_, at the very instant when, recognising the light step of the woman he expected, he, with a self-satisfied, confident, and triumphant look, set the door of his apartment half open. The air of insolent familiarity, expressed by the _negligée_ toilet he had assumed, quickly enabled the marquise to perceive how entirely she had been mistaken in his character. Led away by the kindness and goodness of her heart, and the generosity of her disposition, to take a step which might for ever destroy her reputation, she had accorded this meeting, not from love, but solely from commiseration, in order to console him for the ridiculous part the bad taste of the Duke de Lucenay had made him play before her at the embassy. Words can ill describe the disgust and vexation with which Madame d'Harville beheld the slipshod _déshabillé_ of the commandant, implying as it did his opinion how completely her ill-judged condescension had broken down the barriers of etiquette, and led him to consider no further respect towards her necessary. The timepiece in the small salon which Madame d'Harville ordinarily occupied struck nine o'clock. Dressmakers and tavern-keepers have so much abused the style of Louis XV. and the Renaissance, that the marquise, a woman of infinite taste, had excluded from her apartments this description of ornament, now become so vulgarised, and confined it to that part of the hôtel devoted to the reception of visitors and grand entertainments. Nothing could be more elegant or more _distingué_ than the fitting-up of the salon in which the marquise awaited Rodolph. The colour of the walls as well as the curtains (which, without either valances or draperies, were of Indian texture) was bright straw colour, on which were embroidered, in a darker shade, in unwrought silk, arabesques of the most beautiful designs and whimsical devices. Double curtains of point d'Alençon entirely concealed the windows. The rosewood doors were set off with gold mouldings, most beautifully carved, surrounding in each panel an oval medallion of Sèvres china, nearly a foot in diameter, representing a numberless variety of birds and flowers of surpassing brilliancy and beauty. The frames of the looking-glasses and the cornices of the curtains were also of rosewood, ornamented with similar raised work of silver gilt. The white marble mantelpiece, with its supporting caryatides of antique beauty and exquisite grace, was from the chisel of the proud and imperious Marochetti, that great artist having consented to sculpture this