Renée on reaching the hall found Louise and her father, whom Saccard and Maxime were accompanying. Baron Gouraud had left. Madame Sidonie withdrew with Mignon and Charrier, while Monsieur Hupel de la Noue escorted Madame Michelin, whom her husband followed discreetly. The prefect had spent the rest of the evening courting the pretty brunette. He had just persuaded her to spend a month of the fine weather in the chief town of his department where "some really curious antiquities were to be seen." Louise, who was nibbling on the sly the hardbake which she had in her pocket, was seized with a fit of coughing at the moment of leaving the house. "Cover yourself up well," said her father. And Maxime hastened to tighten the strings of the hood of her opera-cloak. She raised her chin and let herself be swaddled. But when Madame Saccard appeared, Monsieur de Mareuil retraced his steps and bid her good-bye. For a moment they all remained there together talking. Renée, wishing to explain her pallor and her shudders, said that she had felt cold, and had gone upstairs to throw the fur over her shoulders. And she watched for the moment when she might speak in a low voice to Louise, who was looking at her with inquisitive tranquillity. While the gentlemen again shook hands she leant forward and murmured: "You won't marry him, will you? It isn't possible. You know very well--" But the child interrupted her, rising on tip-toe and speaking in her ear: "Oh! be easy, I shall take him off--It is of no consequence since we are going to Italy." And she smiled with the vague smile of a vicious sphinx. Renée remained stammering. She did not understand, she fancied that the hunchback was deriding her. Then when the Mareuils had gone off, repeating several times: "Till Sunday!" she looked at her husband and at Maxime with her frightened eyes, and on beholding them, with quiet flesh and satisfied attitudes, she hid her face in her hands, fled, and sought a refuge in the depths of the conservatory. The pathways were deserted. The large leaves were asleep, and on the heavy sheet of water of the basin two budding Nymphæa slowly unfolded. Renée would have liked to cry; but the damp warmth, the strong perfume which she recognised, caught her at the throat and strangled her despair. She looked at her feet, at the edge of the basin, at the spot of yellow sand where she had stretched the bearskin the winter before. And when she raised her eyes she again saw between the two open doors a figure of the cotillon being danced right away in the background.