The next morning Calyste came before mid-day and slipped upstairs, as he was told, into Camille’s own room, where he found the books.  Felicite sat before the window, smoking, contemplating in turn the marshes, the sea, and Calyste, to whom she now and then said a few words about Beatrix.  At one time, seeing the marquise strolling about the garden, she raised a curtain in a way to attract her attention, and also to throw a band of light across Calyste’s book.

“To-day, my child, I shall ask you to stay to dinner; but you must refuse, with a glance at the marquise, which will show her how much you regret not staying.”

When the three actors met in the salon, and this comedy was played, Calyste felt for a moment his equivocal position, and the glance that he cast on Beatrix was far more expressive than Felicite expected.  Beatrix had dressed herself charmingly.

“What a bewitching toilet, my dearest!” said Camille, when Calyste had departed.

These manoeuvres lasted six days, during which time many conversations, into which Camille Maupin put all her ability, took place, unknown to Calyste, between herself and the marquise.  They were like the preliminaries of a duel between two women,—­a duel without truce, in which the assault was made on both sides with snares, feints, false generosities, deceitful confessions, crafty confidences, by which one hid and the other bared her love; and in which the sharp steel of Camille’s treacherous words entered the heart of her friend, and left its poison there.  Beatrix at last took offence at what she thought Camille’s distrust; she considered it out of place between them.  At the same time she was enchanted to find the great writer a victim to the pettiness of her sex, and she resolved to enjoy the pleasure of showing her where her greatness ended, and how even she could be humiliated.

“My dear, what is to be the excuse to-day for Monsieur du Guenic’s not dining with us?” she asked, looking maliciously at her friend.  “Monday you said we had engagements; Tuesday the dinner was poor; Wednesday you were afraid his mother would be angry; Thursday you wanted to take a walk with me; and yesterday you simply dismissed him without a reason.  To-day I shall have my way, and I mean that he shall stay.”

“Already, my dear!” said Camille, with cutting irony.  The marquise blushed.  “Stay, Monsieur du Guenic,” said Camille, in the tone of a queen.

Beatrix became cold and hard, contradictory in tone, epigrammatic, and almost rude to Calyste, whom Felicite sent home to play mouche with Charlotte de Kergarouet.

“She is not dangerous at any rate,” said Beatrix, sarcastically.