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Now she began miserably to wish that she had never done it. Meanwhile, Adrienne's first move on re-entering her room was to dash into the adjoining closet and close the treacherous register with an energetic hand. To block further listening, she promptly stowed a suitcase on end against it. "Voila! I have now remedied the trouble," she announced, as she emerged from the closet.

The Jesuit had now gradually recovered his presence of mind, and his apparent calmness greatly irritated M. de Montbron, who, but for Adrienne's presence, would have assumed another tone than jests. "There is some mistake," said Rodin, "in what you have done me the honor to tell me, my dear young lady.

But Adrienne's love was insipid compared with the intoxicating and appetizing voluptuousness of this woman, so adorable in her exquisite luxury, the refinements of her charm, the singular grace of her attitudes, of her mind, of her disjointed conversation which dared everything, mocked, caressed, beginning with a pout and ending with some drollery, and challenged passion by exasperating it with refusals and mockery that changed into distracting lasciviousness.

When she perceived Guy enter, she greeted him with a sad smile, and Vaudrey eagerly offered his hand to him as if he relied greatly on him to arrange matters. Adrienne's repressed grief had pained Lissac. While to the other guests she appeared to be only somewhat fatigued, to him the open wound and sorrow were visible. He plunged into the crowd.

Society had not cast him out, but Society had shown him in many subtle ways that he was no longer her favorite. He had taken a plebeian stand with the masses. Meanwhile, from various sources, Horton had received warnings of actual personal danger. But at these he had laughed, and no hint of them had reached Adrienne's ears.

As she spoke, she gathered up Adrienne's magnificent hair, and twisted it as well as she could behind her head. Alas! it was no longer the fair, light hand of Georgette, Florine, or Hebe that arranged the beauteous locks of their mistress with so much love and pride!

On the contrary, it always appears to me so fine, so bright, so sunny, and to suit so well her snowy complexion and black eyes, that in truth I would not have had it other than it was; and I am sure, that now this very color of her hair, which would be a blemish in any one else, must only add to the charm of Mademoiselle Adrienne's face. She must have such a sweet vixen look!"

That of Adrienne's dressing-room was closed on the outside by a sash containing a single large pane of plate glass, and within, by another large plate of ground glass.

Nevertheless, Adrienne's accusing question, "Have you then no shame to be thus so small; so contemptible?" rang in her ears. It dawned painfully upon her that she was ashamed of herself. More, that she was done with eavesdropping for good and all. Early in the year she had stumbled upon the discovery that the register in the dress closet could be efficiently used as a listening post.

Baleinier, though he had called in his services to forward immense interests. Neither had Tripeaud been informed of it, for the princess believed that she had destroyed every vestige of those papers of Adrienne's father, which might have put him on the scent of this discovery.