imitating rustic woodwork, stood out more curiously from the soft green of the water and of the grass, at this last hour of daylight. Used to the graces of these skilfully arranged points of view, Renée, again yielding to her feeling of weariness, had completely lowered her eyelids, no longer observing aught but her tapering fingers as she twined around them the long hairs of the bearskin. But there came a kind of jerk in the even trot of the line of carriages. And, raising her head, she bowed to two young women reclining side by side, with amorous languor, in a barouche which was noisily leaving the road that skirts the lane to turn down one of the lateral avenues. The Marchioness d'Espanet, whose husband, at that time one of the emperor's aides-de-camp, had just rallied with a good deal of fuss to the scandal of the sulking old nobility, was one of the most illustrious society queens of the Second Empire; the other, Madame Haffner, had married a famous manufacturer of Colmar, twenty times millionaire, and whom the Empire was turning into a political personage. Renée, who had known at school the two inseparables as they were slyly termed, always called them by their Christian names, Adeline and Suzanne. As, after greeting them with a smile, she was about to once more huddle herself up in her wraps, a laugh from Maxime caused her to turn round. "No, really now, I feel sad, don't laugh, it's serious," said she on seeing the young man looking at her mockingly, making fun of her recumbent posture. Maxime assumed a ludicrous tone of voice. "We are very much to be pitied, we are jealous!" She seemed quite astonished. "I!" said she. "Jealous! whatever about?" Then she added, with her disdainful pout, as though suddenly recollecting: "Ah! yes, big Laure! She doesn't trouble me much, I can assure you. If Aristide, as you all wish to make me believe, has paid the creature's debts and thus saved her the necessity of taking a trip to foreign parts, it merely shows that he loves money less than I thought he did. This will make him quite a favourite with the ladies again. The dear fellow, I never interfere with him." She smiled, she uttered "the dear fellow," in a tone of voice full of friendly indifference. And all on a sudden, becoming quite sad again, and casting around her that despairing glance of women who know not how to amuse themselves, she murmured: "Oh! I should be only too delighted--But no, I'm not jealous, not in the least jealous." She stopped, hesitating. "You see, I feel bored," she at length said abruptly.