“Ah! Dieu!” said Adrienne.  “Already I believe that I should regret nothing.  No, I assure you, nothing whatever.”

She, too, might have desired,—­as Vaudrey did formerly—­to leave the soiree, to be with her husband again, and she thought that Sulpice found it necessary to remain longer, since he had not definitely decided on going away.

The new salon that he entered, communicated with a smaller, circular one, hung with Japanese silk draperies, and lighted by a Venetian chandelier that cast a subdued light over the divans upon which some of the guests sat chatting.  Sulpice immediately divined, as if by instinct, that Marianne was there.  He went straight in that direction, and as he entered the doorway, through the opening framed by two pale blue portieres, he saw in front of him, sitting side by side, the pretty girl and the Duc de Rosas to whom she had listened so attentively, almost devotedly, a little earlier; he recalled this now.

The light fell directly on Mademoiselle Kayser’s shoulders and played over her fair hair.  The duke was looking at her.

Vaudrey took but a single step forward.

He experienced an altogether curious and inexplicable sensation.  This tete-a-tete displeased him.

At that moment, on half-turning round,—­perhaps by chance—­she perceived the minister and greeting him with a sweet smile, she rose and beckoned to him to approach her.

The sky-blue satin hangings, on which the light fell, seemed like a natural framework for the beautiful blonde creature.

“Your Excellency,” she said, “permit me to introduce my friend, the Duc de Rosas, he is too accomplished not to appreciate eloquence and he entertains the greatest admiration for you.”

Rosas had risen in his turn, and greeted the minister with a very peculiar half-inclination, not as a suitor in the presence of a powerful man, but as a nobleman greeting a man of talent.

Vaudrey sought to discover an agreeable word in the remarks of this man but he failed to do so.  He had, nevertheless, just before applauded Rosas’s remarks, either out of condescension or from politeness.  But it seemed to him that here the duke was no longer the same man.  He gave him the impression of an intruder who had thrust himself in the way that led to some possible opportunity.  He nevertheless concealed all trace of the ill-humor that he himself could not define or explain, and ended by uttering a commonplace phrase in praise of the duke, but which really meant nothing.

As he was about to move away, Marianne detained him by a gesture: 

“Well, your Excellency,” she remarked, with a charming play of her lips as she smiled, “you see,”—­and she pointed to the blue draperies of the little salon, as dainty as a boudoir—­“you see that there are some women who like blue.”

“Yes, Madame Marsy!—­” Vaudrey answered, with an entirely misplaced irony that naturally occurred to him, as a reproach.