“Now your anxieties are relieved,” said he, kissing his wife.  “I am going to work to-morrow morning.  So I am going to bed this minute to get up early, by your leave, my pet.”

The suspicion that had dawned in Hortense’s mind vanished; she was miles away from the truth.  Madame Marneffe!  She had never thought of her.  Her fear for her Wenceslas was that he should fall in with street prostitutes.  The names of Bixiou and Leon de Lora, two artists noted for their wild dissipations, had alarmed her.

Next morning she saw Wenceslas go out at nine o’clock, and was quite reassured.

“Now he is at work again,” said she to herself, as she proceeded to dress her boy.  “I see he is quite in the vein!  Well, well, if we cannot have the glory of Michael Angelo, we may have that of Benvenuto Cellini!”

Lulled by her own hopes, Hortense believed in a happy future; and she was chattering to her son of twenty months in the language of onomatopoeia that amuses babes when, at about eleven o’clock, the cook, who had not seen Wenceslas go out, showed in Stidmann.

“I beg pardon, madame,” said he.  “Is Wenceslas gone out already?”

“He is at the studio.”

“I came to talk over the work with him.”

“I will send for him,” said Hortense, offering Stidmann a chair.

Thanking Heaven for this piece of luck, Hortense was glad to detain Stidmann to ask some questions about the evening before.  Stidmann bowed in acknowledgment of her kindness.  The Countess Steinbock rang; the cook appeared, and was desired to go at once and fetch her master from the studio.

“You had an amusing dinner last night?” said Hortense.  “Wenceslas did not come in till past one in the morning.”

“Amusing? not exactly,” replied the artist, who had intended to fascinate Madame Marneffe.  “Society is not very amusing unless one is interested in it.  That little Madame Marneffe is clever, but a great flirt.”

“And what did Wenceslas think of her?” asked poor Hortense, trying to keep calm.  “He said nothing about her to me.”

“I will only say one thing,” said Stidmann, “and that is, that I think her a very dangerous woman.”

Hortense turned as pale as a woman after childbirth.

“So—­it was at—­at Madame Marneffe’s that you dined—­and not—­not with Chanor?” said she, “yesterday—­and Wenceslas—­and he——­”

Stidmann, without knowing what mischief he had done, saw that he had blundered.

The Countess did not finish her sentence; she simply fainted away.  The artist rang, and the maid came in.  When Louise tried to get her mistress into her bedroom, a serious nervous attack came on, with violent hysterics.  Stidmann, like any man who by an involuntary indiscretion has overthrown the structure built on a husband’s lie to his wife, could not conceive that his words should produce such an effect; he supposed that the Countess was in such delicate health that the slightest contradiction was mischievous.