A quarter of an hour afterwards, Frederick made his way up to her apartment.
There was in it an indefinable odour, emanating from some delicate substances with which it was filled. In the middle of the bed lay a black dress, which formed a glaring contrast with the pink coverlet.
Madame Dambreuse was standing at the corner of the mantelpiece. Without attributing to her any passionate regret, he thought she looked a little sad; and, in a mournful voice, he said:
As she turned around, her eyes fell on the dress, which she inspected. Then she told him not to stand on ceremony.
"Smoke, if you like! You can make yourself at home with me!"
Frederick was astonished at this exclamation. He replied, as he kissed her hand:
This allusion to the facility with which the intrigue between them had been carried on hurt Madame Dambreuse.
"Ah! you don't know the services that I did for him, or the misery in which I lived!"
"Why, certainly! Was it a safe thing to have always near him that bastard, a daughter, whom he introduced into the house at the end of five years of married life, and who, were it not for me, might have led him into some act of folly?"
Then she explained how her affairs stood. The arrangement on the occasion of her marriage was that the property of each party should be separate.[I] The amount of her inheritance was three hundred thousand francs. M. Dambreuse had guaranteed by the marriage contract that in the event of her surviving him, she should have an income of fifteen thousand francs a year, together with the ownership of the mansion. But a short time afterwards he had made a will by which he gave her all he possessed, and this she estimated, so far as it was possible to ascertain just at present, at over three millions.
[I] A marriage may take place in France under the _régime de communauté_, by which the husband has the enjoyment and the right of disposing of the property both of himself and his wife; the _régime dotal_, by which he can only dispose of the income; and the _régime de séparation de biens_, by which husband and wife enjoy and exercise control over their respective estates separately.--TRANSLATOR.
"It was worth the trouble, wasn't it? However, I contributed to it! It was my own property I was protecting; Cécile would have unjustly robbed me of it."