“They envy me; and I can understand it!  I would not change places with anybody.  There, our friend Prince Panine is very happy; he has married a woman whom he loves and who adores him.  Well, he is not happier than I am!”

Jeanne rose abruptly, and gave her husband a terrible look.

“Monsieur!” she cried with rage.

“I beg your pardon,” said Cayrol, humbly; “I appear ridiculous to you, but my happiness is stronger than I am, and I cannot hide my joy.  You will see that I can be grateful.  I will spend my life in trying to please you.  I have a surprise for you to begin with.”

“What kind of surprise?” asked Jeanne, with indifference.

Cayrol rubbed his hands with a mysterious air.  He was enjoying beforehand the pleasant surprise he had in store for his wife.

“You think we are going to Paris to spend our honeymoon like ordinary folk?”

Jeanne started.  Cayrol seemed unfortunate in his choice of words.

“Well, not at all,” continued the banker.  “Tomorrow I leave my offices.  My customers may say what they like; I will leave my business, and we are off.”

Jeanne showed signs of pleasure.  A flash of joy lit up her face.  To go away, that was rest for her!

“And where shall we go?”

“That is the surprise!  You know that the Prince and his wife intend travelling!”

“Yes; but they refused to say where they were going;” interrupted Jeanne, with a troubled expression.

“Not to me.  They are going to Switzerland.  Well, we shall join them there.”

Jeanne arose like a startled deer when it hears the sound of a gun.

“Join them there!” she exclaimed.

“Yes; to continue the journey together.  A party of four; two newly-married couples.  It will be charming.  I spoke to Serge on the subject.  He objected at first, but the Princess came to my assistance.  And when he saw that his wife and I were agreed, he commenced to laugh, and said:  ‘You wish it?  I consent.  Don’t say anything more!’ It is all very well to talk of love’s solitude; in about a fortnight, passed tete-a-tete, Serge will be glad to have us.  We will go to Italy to see the lakes; and there, in a boat, all four, of us will have such pleasant times.”

Cayrol might have gone on talking for an hour, but Jeanne was not listening.  She was thinking.  Thus all the efforts which she had decided to make to escape from him whom she loved would be useless.  An invincible fatality ever brought her toward him whom she was seeking to avoid.  And it was her husband who was aiding this inevitable and execrable meeting.  A bitter smile played on her lips.  There was something mournfully comic in this stubbornness of Cayrol’s, in throwing her in the way of Serge.

Cayrol, embarrassed by Jeanne’s silence, waited a moment.

“What is the matter?” he asked.  “You are just like the Prince when I spoke to him on the subject.”