"A pretty question!if you don't know that,my joking friend,why should I believe you?""Go and ask Nathan,who has left you to look for his other mistress,where he passed the night,three days ago.He tried to kill himself without a word to you,my dear,--and all for want of money.That shows how much you know about the affairs of a man whom you say you love,and who leaves you without a penny,and kills himself,--or,rather,doesn't kill himself,for his misses it.Suicides that don't kill are about as absurd as a duel without a scratch.""That's a lie,"said Florine."He dined with me that very day.The poor fellow had the sheriff after him;he was hiding,as well he might.""Go and ask at the hotel du Mail,rue du Mail,if he was not taken there that morning,half dead of the fumes of charcoal,by a handsome young woman with whom he has been in love over a year.Her letters are at this moment under your very nose in your own house.If you want to teach Nathan a good lesson,let us all three go there;and I'll show you,papers in hand,how you can save him from the sheriff and Clichy if you choose to be the good girl that you are.""Try that on others than Florine,my little man.I am certain that Nathan has never been in love with any one but me.""On the contrary,he has been in love with a woman in society for over a year--""A woman in society,he!"cried Florine."I don't trouble myself about such nonsense as that.""Well,do you want me to make him come and tell you that he will not take you home from here to-night.""If you can make him tell me that,"said Florine,"I'll take YOU home,and we'll look for those letters,which I shall believe in when I see them,and not till then.He must have written them while I slept.""Stay here,"said Felix,"and watch."
So saying,he took the arm of his wife and moved to a little distance.
Presently,Nathan,who had been hunting up and down the foyer like a dog looking for its master,returned to the spot where the mask had addressed him.Seeing on his face an expression he could not conceal,Florine placed herself like a post in front of him,and said,imperiously:--"I don't wish you to leave me again;I have my reasons for this."The countess then,at the instigation of her husband,went up to Raoul and said in his ear,--"Marie.Who is this woman?Leave her at once,and meet me at the foot of the grand staircase."In this difficult extremity Raoul dropped Florine's arm,and though she caught his own and held it forcibly,she was obliged,after a moment,to let him go.Nathan disappeared into the crowd.
"What did I tell you?"said Felix in Florine's astonished ears,offering her his arm.
"Come,"she said;"whoever you are,come.Have you a carriage here?"For all answer,Vandenesse hurried Florine away,followed by his wife.
A few moments later the three masks,driven rapidly by the Vandenesse coachman,reached Florine's house.As soon as she had entered her own apartments the actress unmasked.Madame de Vandenesse could not restrain a quiver of surprise at Florine's beauty as she stood there choking with anger,and superb in her wrath and jealousy.
"There is,somewhere in these rooms,"said Vandenesse,"a portfolio,the key of which you have never had;the letters are probably in it.""Well,well,for once in my life I am bewildered;you know something that I have been uneasy about for some days,"cried Florine,rushing into the study in search of the portfolio.
Vandenesse saw that his wife was turning pale beneath her mask.
Florine's apartment revealed more about the intimacy of the actress and Nathan than any ideal mistress would wish to know.The eye of a woman can take in the truth of such things in a second,and the countess saw vestiges of Nathan which proved to her the certainty of what Vandenesse had said.Florine returned with the portfolio.
"How am I to open it?"she said.
The actress rang the bell and sent into the kitchen for the cook's knife.When it came she brandished it in the air,crying out in ironical tones:--"With this they cut the necks of 'poulets.'"The words,which made the countess shiver,explained to her,even better than her husband had done the night before,the depths of the abyss into which she had so nearly fallen.
"What a fool I am!"said Florine;"his razor will do better."She fetched one of Nathan's razors from his dressing-table,and slit the leather cover of the portfolio,through which Marie's letters dropped.Florine snatched one up hap-hazard,and looked it over.
"Yes,she must be a well-bred woman.It looks to me as if there were no mistakes in spelling here."The count gathered up the letters hastily and gave them to his wife,who took them to a table as if to see that they were all there.
"Now,"said Vandenesse to Florine,"will you let me have those letters for these?"showing her five bank-bills of ten thousand francs each.
