Coquettishly lying back in a corner of the sofa, her head carelessly supported by an arm the form and whiteness of which could be seen nearly to the elbow through the wide, open sleeve of a black velvet dressing-gown, her Cinderella foot in its dainty slipper of Russia leather resting on a cushion of orange satin, the handsome Hungarian had the look of a portrait by Laurence or Winterhalter, plus the naivete of the pose.

“Monsieur,” she said, with the slightly foreign accent which lent an added charm to her words, “I cannot help thinking it rather droll that a man of your mind and rare penetration should have thought you had an enemy in me.”

“But, Madame la comtesse,” replied la Peyrade, allowing her to read in his eyes an astonishment mingled with distrust, “all the appearances, you must admit, were of that nature.  A suitor interposes to break off a marriage which has been offered to me with every inducement; this rival does me the service of showing himself so miraculously stupid and awkward that I could easily have set him aside, when suddenly a most unlooked-for and able auxiliary devotes herself to protecting him on the very ground where he shows himself most vulnerable.”

“You must admit,” said the countess, laughing, “that the protege showed himself a most intelligent man, and that he seconded my efforts valiantly.”

“His clumsiness could not have been, I think, very unexpected to you,” replied la Peyrade; “therefore the protection you have deigned to give him is the more cruel to me.”

“What a misfortune it would be,” said the countess, with charmingly affected satire, “if your marriage with Mademoiselle Celeste were prevented!  Do you really care so much, monsieur, for that little school-girl?”

In that last word, especially the intonation with which it was uttered, there was more than contempt, there was hatred.  This expression did not escape an observer of la Peyrade’s strength, but not being a man to advance very far on a single remark he merely replied:—­

“Madame, the vulgar expression, to ‘settle down,’ explains this situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future.  When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit, more virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune which is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there so astonishing in the fact that his heart yields to gratitude and that he welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?”

“I have always thought,” replied the countess, “that the power of a man’s intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I imagined that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man’s lawyer, would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral aspirations.”

“Ah! madame,” returned la Peyrade, “the iron hand of necessity compels us to strange resignations.  The question of daily bread is one of those before which all things bend the knee.  Apollo was forced to ’get a living,’ as the shepherd of Admetus.”