"There, between Rohritz and that flower-table, there----"
By 'Rohritz' Stella has been wont for weeks to understand the husband of Thérèse; she has not yet heard of Edgar's arrival in Paris. She raises her eyes, and starts violently. He is here in the same room with her, and has not even taken the trouble to bid her good-evening. Good heavens! what of that? How many minutes will pass before Monsieur de Hauterive comes to ask her to redeem Thérèse Rohritz's pledged word? and then---- The blood mounts to her cheeks.
"_Sapristi!_" Zino thinks to himself, "can it be possible that my brother-in-law has been keener of vision than my very clever sister?"
"Do you not think, Baron Rohritz," Stasy meanwhile remarks to the victim still fettered to her side, "that Prince Capito pays too marked attention to our little friend Stella?"
"That is his affair," Edgar replies, coldly.
"And what does your sister-in-law say to Stella's conduct with Capito?"
"My sister-in-law evidently has no fault whatever to find with the young lady, for this very day she praised her in the warmest terms."
"Yes, yes," Stasy murmurs; "Thérèse, they say, has taken Stella under her wing."
"Yes, yes; all Paris is aware that Thérèse,"--to speak all the more familiarly of her distinguished acquaintances the less intimate she is with them is one of Stasy's disagreeable characteristics,--"that Thérèse has set herself the task of marrying Stella well. If this be so she ought to advise the girl to conduct herself somewhat more prudently, or the little goose will soon have compromised herself so absolutely that it will be impossible to find a respectable match for her. Do you know that for Stella's sake Zino has joined della Seggiola's class?"
"Would you make Stella Meineck responsible for Prince Capito's eccentricities?"
"Granted that it was not in consequence of her direct permission, I do not say it was. But she makes appointments with him in the Louvre; and"--Stasy's eyes sparkle with fiendish triumph--"she visits him at his lodgings. A very worthy and truthful friend of mine has rooms opposite the Prince's in the Rue d'Anjou, and she lately saw Stella, closely veiled, pass beneath the archway of his----"
"Absurd!" Rohritz exclaims, indignantly; and, without allowing her to finish, he leaves her very unceremoniously to go to Stella. But before he can make his way among the various trains, and the thicket of furniture of a Parisian drawing-room, to the yellow divan, some one else has taken the place beside Stella just vacated by Zino,--a handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty, well dressed, correct in his appearance, but not distinguished, although it would be impossible to describe what is lacking. There is something brand-new, stiff, shiny, about him. Between him and a dandy of the purest water, like Capito, for instance, there is the same difference that is to be found between a piece of genuine old Meissner porcelain and some of modern manufacture.