The bridegroom came into the room, agitated, unable to ask permission to enter.

He strode across the floor and sat down weakly before the ladies.
They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.
'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her; there was no aunt; there is no money!' 'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of great astonishment.
'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.
'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoarsely; and he wept.
And now Celeste herself came into the house.

She came within the room, and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her weeping husband.

If you have ever enticed a rosy-faced child to bathe in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the face of the child-like deceiver.

With baby-like courage she smiled upon them all.
Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself.