Five o'clock already, and the stout Afchin did not come. The Levantines began to laugh behind their fans. Luckily, tea had just been served, and Spanish wines, and a quantity of delicious Turkish cakes, which were found nowhere else, and the receipts for which, brought to Paris by the ex-slave, are preserved in harems, as certain secrets connected with the finest confectionery are preserved in our convents. That made a diversion. Hemerlingue, who came from his office from time to time on Saturdays to pay his respects to the ladies, was drinking a glass of madeira at the small table on which the refreshments were served, talking with Maurice Trott, formerly Said-Pacha's bath-master, when his wife, always mild and tranquil externally, approached him. He knew what fierce wrath must be hidden beneath that impenetrable calm, and he asked her timidly, in an undertone: "No one?" "No one. You see to what an outrage you have exposed me!" She smiled, her eyes half-closed, as she removed with the ends of her fingers a crumb that had lodged in his long black whiskers; but her transparent little nostrils quivered with awe-inspiring eloquence. "Oh! she will come," said the banker, with his mouth full. "I am sure she will come." A rustling of silk, of a train being adjusted in the adjoining room, caused the baroness to turn her head quickly. To the great delight of the cluster of "bales" in one corner, who were watching everything, it was not she who was expected. She bore but little resemblance to Mademoiselle Afchin, the tall, graceful blonde, with the tired features and irreproachable toilet, worthy in every respect to bear a name as illustrious as that of Dr. Jenkins. In the last two or three months the beautiful Madame Jenkins had changed greatly, had grown much older. There comes a time in the life of a woman who has long retained her youth, when the years which have passed over her head without leaving a wrinkle write themselves down pitilessly all at once in ineffaceable marks. We no longer say when we see her: "How lovely she is!" but, "She must have been very lovely." And that cruel fashion of speaking of the past, of referring to a distant period what was a visible fact but yesterday, constitutes a beginning of old age and of retirement,--a substitution of reminiscences for all past triumphs. Was it the disappointment of seeing the doctor's wife instead of Madame Jansoulet, or was the discredit which the Duc de Mora's death had brought upon the fashionable doctor destined to overflow upon her who bore his name? There was something of both those causes, and perhaps of another as well, in the cold welcome which the baroness accorded Madame Jenkins. A murmured greeting, a few hurried words, and she returned to the battalion of noble dames who were nibbling away with great zest. The salon became animated under the influence of the Spanish wines. People no longer whispered; they talked.