Terribly anxious for the last two weeks, and wounded by Melchior's silence, the duchess herself dictated Philoxene's letter to her cousin, and the moment she had read the answer, rather too explicit for her quinquagenary vanity, she sent for the banker and made close inquiries as to the exact fortune of Monsieur Mignon.

Finding herself betrayed and abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave way to a paroxysm of anger, hatred, and cold vindictiveness.

Philoxene knocked at the door of the sumptuous room, and entering found her mistress with her eyes full of tears,--so unprecedented a phenomenon in the fifteen years she had waited upon her that the woman stopped short stupefied.
"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the duchess say.
"A letter from Havre, madame." Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and further into the letter.

Hold out a pole no thicker than a walking-stick to a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of safety.

The happy Eleonore believed in Canalis's good faith when she had read through the four pages in which love and business, falsehood and truth, jostled each other.