The Grandins were perfectly satisfied with Mademoiselle Rose, to Diane’s infinite chagrin. This reconciled them to Diane’s marriage, which, of course, overwhelmed them with its splendor. Grandin let his imagination loose, and told so many lies about the Marquis’ shooting-box, which was magnified first into a large country house, then into a chateau, and finally into a mediÆval castle, that he really came to believe the story himself. In vain Madame Grandin corrected him and pointed out amiably that he was lying. But Madame Grandin herself grew capable of believing anything when she saw a real, live marquis sitting in a chair discussing wedding plans with Diane.

Jean Leroux plodded about in the daytime, and at night, like Diane, would say to himself:

“There are but ten more nights; there are but nine more nights.”Alas, like her, the storm and stress of feeling improved his acting. He conceived a hatred of the innocent and buxom Rose le Roi, and began to dread the idea of making stage love to her. Being an honest fellow, however, he kept this to himself, although in his own mind he called the tall, handsome Rose a great bouncing lummux, and about as impressionable as a Normandy heifer.

FranÇois was the only one of them who behaved unconcernedly, or who laughed during those three weeks. He chaffed Diane remorselessly, but always with good nature, and offered to provide her with a pedigree as long as that of the Marquis, and advised her to return to what he declared was the original spelling of her name, D’Orian, and boldly proclaim herself a scion of that noble house. The family, he declared, antedated the CÆsars, and was founded shortly after Romulus and Remus, and asserted that the planet Aurania was named for Diane’s ancestors. At these jokes, all would once have laughed; now, nobody thought them amusing except FranÇois himself.

FranÇois breakfasted with the Bishop several times in those tumultuous days, and on every occasion, as Mathilde sardonically remarked to the Bishop, something mysteriously disappeared. A handsome muffler of the Bishop’s apparently evaporated, also an excellent umbrella, and several other useful trifles.

“But,” said the Bishop, boldly, to Mathilde, “suppose I gave that scarf to M. le Bourgeois? I never liked it. And as for the umbrella—well, it stood in the anteroom and may have disappeared in any one of a hundred ways, and an umbrella is like innocence—once lost, it is never recovered. Why are you so suspicious, Mathilde? And besides, do you think I can forget that my father was a laborer on the estates of—”

“So your Grace has told me a thousand times,” rudely interrupted Mathilde, flinging out of the room.

The Bishop winked softly to himself; as usual, he had merely suggested a hypothetical case. He knew as well as Mathilde where the scarf and the umbrella and the rest of the things went.

Even the General succumbed to FranÇois’ charms to the extent of ten francs which FranÇois asked as a temporary assistance.

“Because,” as FranÇois said, “you know the proverb—‘God is omnipotent, but money is His first lieutenant.’ Virtue cannot secure a man from poverty—else, would I be lending money instead of borrowing it.”

General Bion promptly handed out the ten francs, and as promptly put it down in his notebook under the head of “Charity.”

The Bishop, by way of excusing himself for listening to FranÇois’ songs and jokes and watching his delicious antics, began to urge FranÇois quite seriously to repent and confess. At this FranÇois balked.

“If I should do that, your Grace,” he said, “I would commit the only one of the sins in the calendar of which I have not had experience; this is hypocrisy. I don’t repent of anything I ever did except one thing. The other sins I repented when I was caught.”

“FranÇois,” cried the Bishop, scandalized, “after what you have admitted to me that you have done! And what, pray, is the only sin that troubles your conscience?”“Once,” said FranÇois, “I saw a young lady, an actress now in our company, who is soon to be married, dressing in her dressing-room at the theatre, and I looked at her in her unsunned loveliness for about two seconds. I am very sorry for that.”

“It was indeed wicked, gross, beyond words,” said the Bishop. “But there are other wicked things.”

“The others,” said FranÇois, grinning, “were merely sins against myself. I think I have been remarkably free from injuring other persons.”

The Bishop could not concede this, and delivered a long lecture to FranÇois. In return for it, FranÇois did some of his best stunts with only the Bishop as audience, and then going to the wheezy old piano played and sang some of the old songs which always made the tears rain upon the Bishop’s gentle face.

On the Thursday night was Diane’s last performance, as it was desired that Mademoiselle Rose should make her dÉbut before the Saturday night, when they always had the biggest audience of the week.

No prisoner dressing for the guillotine ever felt more acutely that he was crossing the bridge between two worlds than did Diane on the Thursday night. That night she would dwell for the last time in the world where lovers were always true and the villain was always punished in public. Beyond, in the other world, lay Paradise, but it was unfamiliar. That day she had seen the Marquis for the last time until she and Madame Grandin were to step in the carriage which the Marquis was to send for them on the Saturday morning, and go out to the village near the shooting-box where the wedding was to take place in the village church. Diane had begged the Marquis to remain away from the music hall that night. She said to him in Madame Grandin’s presence:

“If I see you, and even think you are in the audience, I shall break down; I can never go through my part, and I shall be forever disgraced.”

“How ridiculous!” cried the Marquis, laughing. “What difference can it make to you now that you are to become the Marquise Egmont de St. Angel?”

Diane made no reply; she could not make any one understand, who had not lived in the ideal world, what it meant to disgrace one’s self in public by breaking down. Madame Grandin said, however:

“That is true. But how can a marquis understand common people like you and me, Diane?”

Everything was ready; the white muslin, nicely washed and ironed, was in Diane’s chest of drawers. The wedding veil and wreath of orange blossoms, which had cost all of ten francs, lay on top of the wedding gown, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. That wedding veil was floating before Diane’s eyes just as a poor mortal, leaving this world which he loves and all the people in it, sees the silvery cloud that masks the gates of pearl leading to Paradise. All the time, whether on the stage or off, she was saying to herself:

“It is the last time, the last, the last, the last.”

And all the others said the same:

“It is the last time, Diane.”

The Grandins drove a knife into Diane’s heart by adding:“But we expect to do just as well with Mademoiselle Rose.”

Even Jean, the taciturn, said:

“Think of it, Diane, after to-night we shall never act together any more! To-morrow you will be a different person, and Saturday you will have a different name and be living in a different world.”

“But I will never change, Jean, while I live,” cried Diane, tremulously. “I will always run to meet you when you come to see me.”

They were both off the stage for two minutes while they were speaking.

“But I sha’n’t come to see you,” said Jean. “Good night will be good-by for me.”

FranÇois’ reminders were totally different.

“I sha’n’t expect to be noticed by you after you are a marquise,” he said. “My family is not as ancient as that of the Egmont de St. Angel, although we are related, and my ancestors fought with Philippe le Bel. But the Marquis’ family were ennobled before mine, and as for you—good God! we are all parvenus when compared with the D’Orian family, going back to Romulus and Remus.”

This made Diane laugh a little, but it did not loosen the clutch of something like the hand of fate upon her heart, and she frankly burst out crying when FranÇois added:

“Nobody will ever dare to call you Skinny again.”

Diane, when she wiped the grease paint off that night, washed her face with her tears.

Madame Grandin suggested that she leave her make-up and little mirror for Mademoiselle Rose, as they represented several francs, but Diane would neither give them nor sell them to her successor, and jealously carried every scrap of her belongings back to her lodging.

All night she lay in her little white bed staring at the winter sky through the window, and at a mocking, grinning moon that obstinately refused to leave the sky until day was breaking, a pallid, wet, and dreary day. As soon as it was light, Diane slipped out of bed and went to the chest of drawers and took a look at the wedding veil and wreath. It seemed to her as if she had spent a night of agony, and that the sight of that veil and the memory of Egmont’s kisses were all that could solace the strange passion of regret that possessed her.Diane contrived to busy herself the whole morning through. It did not take her long to pack up her small wardrobe, but she could not persuade herself to sit down in splendid idleness like a true marquise, but went to work in the kitchen, cleaning out presses and boxes, anything, in short, to keep her at work. Even that was the last time she would have the privilege of cleaning up a kitchen.

The Grandins were very much taken up with Mademoiselle Rose at the music hall, and Jean and FranÇois were assisting in rehearsing the newcomer.

At the midday dinner Mademoiselle Rose was present, and received, so Diane thought in the bitterness of her heart, entirely too much attention. In the midst of the dinner a magnificent bouquet for Diane arrived from the Marquis with a letter sealed with a crest. It seemed to Diane during that meal that the storm of conflicting emotions reached its height; she felt herself to be the most triumphant and the most humiliated of women, the most reluctant and the most eager of brides, wretched beyond words, elated beyond expression, miserable, happy, and utterly bewildered.In the afternoon a fog came up, cold and white, and Diane was thinking of once more going to the park and seeking in the maze of clipped cedars the spot where she had known a tumult of joy. As she stood looking out of the window of her little room, an omnibus passed and stopped. From it descended a lady and a little girl who came straight to the door and pulled the bell. Steps were heard ascending the stairs, and a knock came at Diane’s door. When she opened it, the lady—for she was unmistakably that, in spite of the shabbiness of her attire—walked in unceremoniously, holding by the hand the little girl, and, turning, locked and bolted the door behind her. Then, throwing back her veil, she said in a smooth and composed voice:

“This, I believe is Mademoiselle Diane Dorian?”

Diane bowed, and her quick eye took in the appearance of her guest. She was a woman of thirty, and had once been pretty and even now was interesting, but sallow and thin like a person recovering from an illness. The little girl, too, who was about six years old, was as pale as a snowdrop, and sank rather than sat upon a little stool, leaning her head against her mother’s knee, who sat down at once.

“Pray excuse me,” said the newcomer, “but I am very tired with travelling, and I am not strong.”

“Can I do anything for you?” asked Diane with ready sympathy, and advancing as if to take the child’s hand.

The visitor held up one hand and put the other around the child as if to ward off Diane.

“Wait,” she said, “let me tell you who I am. I am the wife of the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel, and this is his child. Here is my wedding ring.”

She drew off a small and shabby glove, and handed a plain gold ring to Diane. Inside of it was clearly legible, “F. E. de St. A. and E. F” with a date seven years back. Then the wife of the Marquis de St. Angel took from her breast a large locket containing three miniatures painted on the same piece of ivory. One face was her own, another was that of Egmont de St. Angel, and the third was the baby face of the little child. On the back were engraved their names.Diane handed both the ring and the locket back to the wife of the man she loved, and stood motionless for a moment. Then she reeled and fell upon the bed. The silence in the room was unbroken for five minutes except for the coughing of the pale little child. But Diane had not a drop of coward’s blood in her body. At the end of five minutes she rose, and, drawing up a chair, said:

“Tell me all about it, please.”

“We were married,” said the wife of Egmont, “seven years ago in Algeria, where my husband was stationed. We disagreed as a husband and wife will disagree when the husband learns to hate the wife and forgets his child. I was willing to remain in Algeria in a very quiet, small place suited to my limited means, and the climate was good for my child, Claire. The Marquis, you know, is head over ears in debt, so it was easier for me in my position to be poor in Algeria than in France. I called myself Madame Egmont. He often proposed a divorce, and I as often refused and offered to return to France, although I did not wish to come, because it suited me in every way to remain in Algeria. Some weeks ago I heard that he professed to have got a divorce from me, and would marry a music-hall singer. I came home at once. But I was ill on the way and could not travel for a few days after landing. I found out, no matter how, that you were the woman he proposed to marry. I found out, also, that his conduct in other ways has been such that he will soon be dismissed from the army, so that I suppose he was willing to take desperate chances, for he is a desperate man, you may believe.”

“I do believe,” answered Diane. “And I promise you that I will see him but once again, and that is to-morrow morning when he comes to take me away—but he will not take me.”

The two women talked in an ordinary key and with strange calmness.

“How could you fail to suspect the Marquis?” said Madame Egmont. “Have you no friends to advise you?”

“Oh, I have very good friends. But we are very humble people—except one of us—and we don’t understand great people.”

“I shall remain here,” said Madame Egmont, “in this town for some days, until I can see my husband’s colonel—I want to save the name my child bears. Besides, I am not really able to travel—”

She rose as she spoke, and then, suddenly turning an ashy white, fell over in a dead faint in Diane’s arms. Diane, who was strong and supple despite her slimness, carried Madame Egmont like a child and laid her on the bed, Diane’s own bed, and loosened her clothes and did promptly what is to be done for a woman in a faint. The frightened child began to cry, and the sound seemed to bring back Madame Egmont’s wandering consciousness. Diane picked up the child and placed her on the bed, and then ran and fetched a glass of wine for Madame Egmont.

“If I had a bit of bread,” she whispered.

A light broke upon Diane’s mind. She ran back into the little kitchen, started up the fire, and put some broth on it to warm; then rummaging in the cupboard she found some milk which she heated, too.

In ten minutes she walked in the room with a tray. Madame Egmont, sitting up in the little bed, ate her broth and bread, while Diane fed the child sitting in her lap. Then laying the little girl in the bed by the side of her mother, Diane took out a fresh night-dress, and going up to Madame Egmont proceeded unceremoniously to undress her.

“What do you mean?” asked Madame Egmont, weak and bewildered.

“I mean,” said Diane, “that neither you nor this child are in any condition to leave this house to-night, and that you are to sleep in my bed, and I will make a comfortable place on the sofa with pillows for Claire, and you shall stay here, and I will take care of you until you are able to leave—for you are the best friend I ever had in my life.”

Madame Egmont suddenly put down her spoon, and covering her face with her hands, burst into wild weeping, crying meanwhile:

“I thought that you would not care, that you would have my husband on any terms, and now—”

“The broth is getting cold, and the child is getting frightened,” interrupted Diane with authority. “Now pray behave yourself, and stop crying, and let me put the child to bed.”

Madame Egmont did not stop crying at once, but Diane, drawing up the sofa to the other side of the bed, proceeded to make with pillows and covers ruthlessly taken from Madame Grandin’s stores, a comfortable little nest for the child. She then proceeded to put a dressing-sack of her own on the little Claire, by way of a night-dress, and bundled her up in bed, where she gave her more hot milk. Next, she started to make a fire in the little fireplace. The wood was sullen, however, and would not go off at once. Diane, opening the drawer in the bureau, took out the wedding veil and wreath, and thrusting them into the fireplace, a cheerful, ruddy blaze sprang up immediately. Madame Egmont laughed softly at Diane’s action.

Kindness and warmth and food worked a miracle in Madame Egmont and the child. Madame Egmont lay in bed, calm and resigned; she was a feeble creature physically, not strong and robust like Diane, and the limit of her struggles was reached for the time.As for the little girl, she lay quite happy and peaceful and dozed off into a soft sleep.

“Now,” said Diane, “you shall stay here as long as you wish. I claim one more interview with your husband at which I shall treat him not as a fine lady like you would treat him, but as an honest girl, a music-hall singer, would. I promise you I shall make him sad and sorry.”

Something like the ghost of a smile came to the pale lips of Madame Egmont at this frank admission of the social gulf between them.

“I am going out now,” said Diane, “but I will come back at seven o’clock and bring you a good supper, and make you both comfortable for the night.”

Madame Egmont held out her arms.

“I can’t kiss you,” she said, “because I know my husband has kissed you, but you may kiss my child.”

The two women looking into each other’s eyes understood perfectly; Madame Egmont, in giving Diane permission to press her fresh, red lips to the cheek of the little snowdrop of a child, was being accorded the greatest honor that one woman may accord another.“I thank you,” said Diane, “from the bottom of my heart,” as she kneeled by the sofa and took the child in her arms and kissed her.

It was five o’clock, and the fog was increasing every moment, but something stronger than herself drove Diane at full speed toward the maze in the dusky park. She did not want to face the Grandins and FranÇois and Jean, and especially Mademoiselle Rose, until she was obliged to do so.

At supper, which was at six o’clock, the party missed Diane. As it was the first night of Mademoiselle Rose’s appearance, they were all rather hurried, and made no search for Diane, expecting her to appear at every moment. Just as they were about to rise from the table, Diane walked in. Her face was flushed, her eyes brilliant. She had to make a terrible confession, but, with the undying instinct of an actress, she meant to do it in the most dramatic manner possible.

“Listen, all of you,” she said; “the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel is a scoundrel, a criminal. He has already a wife and child that are now in this house. Just wait until to-morrow morning when he comes to take me to the village that we may be married—Ha, ha!”

Her laugh, studied and rippling like an actress’s, made Jean’s blood run cold.

“Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies,” she added. No one spoke, except Madame Grandin, who, after a gasp, said that it was well Diane had found it out in time.

Mademoiselle Rose looked a trifle uneasy. She thought that Diane might want her old place back again. Diane knew this by clairvoyance.

“Don’t be alarmed, Mademoiselle,” said Diane, who considered the innocent Rose as her worst enemy next the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel.

“I can get an engagement in Paris without the slightest difficulty. When you come back from the theatre, Grandin, please to go to your room the other way, because I shall have to sleep on the sofa here to-night. The wife and child of the Marquis are in my room. To-morrow I shall be gone.”

They all were stunned and dazed, but governed by the iron discipline of the stage which required them in five minutes to be in their canvas dressing-rooms, rose to go.

“I always told you I was ashamed to own the Marquis as a cousin,” said FranÇois after a moment.

“But the advertisement is not utterly lost,” bellowed Grandin. “I only hope Mademoiselle Rose will have an adventure with a marquis.”

“Oh,” cried Madame Grandin, reproachfully, to her husband, “you always think of advertising first! Well, Diane expected something great to happen at Bienville, and I am sure something great has happened.”

Only Jean lingered a moment as he passed Diane, his strong face working in agitation.

“I will kill him, Diane!” he said.

“Oh, no!” cried Diane, catching him by the sleeve, “that would be doing him a service. And besides, it would cost your life. No, leave him to me; I will do much worse than kill him.”

Jean went out, and Diane, taking off her hat and cloak, busied herself with arranging a little supper on a tray for Madame Egmont and the child. She took it in, stirred up the fire once more, and lighted a softly shaded lamp. Madame Egmont made no fresh protests of gratitude, but her eyes were eloquent, and the little girl clung to Diane. Warmth and food and attendance were luxuries to the wife and child of the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel.

The next morning at ten o’clock a handsome livery carriage drove up to the door, and the Marquis in ordinary morning dress got out and came upstairs. He knocked gayly at the door of the little sitting-room, and Diane’s clear voice called out:

“Come in.”

The Marquis entered, and, instead of seeing Diane in bridal array, found her wearing her ordinary black morning gown, and sitting by the table with a basket of stockings before her which she was darning industriously. He started in surprise, and said:

“What is the meaning of this, Diane? I have come for you and Madame Grandin.”

“I am not going to be married to-day,” responded Diane, coolly, holding up a stocking to the light and clipping a thread; “I have changed my mind.”The Marquis stood in stunned surprise for a few moments, then gradually an angry flush overspread his handsome face, and he shouted:

“What do you mean? This is the most extraordinary conduct I have ever known.”

“Not half as extraordinary as yours,” answered Diane, still darning away diligently.

“I demand an explanation,” replied the Marquis, violently. “I do not choose to be treated in this manner.”

Diane finished a pair of stockings, smoothed them out, rolled them up carefully, laid her sewing implements in the basket, and taking from her pocket the locket of the Marquis and his wife and child, showed it to him.

The face of Egmont de St. Angel changed to a deadly pallor.

“That woman,” he said, “was my wife, but she disappeared in Algeria, and I have not seen her or heard of her for seven years, so that I have a legal right to presume that she is dead.”

“Oh, what a terrible lie you are telling!” answered Diane. “You have heard from her in the last year, but you thought she was out of the way in Algeria. And I don’t think now that you ever really meant to marry me.”

Here was the chance of the Marquis. He smiled and answered:

“Well, I was doing you a great honor in taking up with you on any terms.”

He had remained standing, and Diane rose, too, and went toward the bedroom door of Madame Grandin. She opened it suddenly, and Madame Grandin, who had been on her knees listening at the keyhole, tumbled into the room, but speedily got up on her feet. Behind her were Grandin, FranÇois, and Jean.

Then Diane turned, and, walking back to the Marquis, lifted up her strong, young hand and gave him a terrible blow on the cheek.

The Marquis, stunned with surprise, staggered back, then, recovering himself, advanced with his fist uplifted. The gaze of the man and woman met, hate and fury in the eyes of the Marquis, fury and hate in those of Diane.

Meanwhile, the Grandins, FranÇois, and Jean had all burst into a concerted stage laugh.

“Come now, my dear Marquis of the Holy Angels!” cried FranÇois; “you haven’t done the handsome thing, I must say, and this young lady has served you right.”

Jean said nothing at all, but making a lunge toward the Marquis, collared him and threw him on the floor. Then with his knee on the Marquis’s chest, Jean thumped and pounded his enemy.

Diane stood by, laughing and clapping her hands. The Marquis was a strong and lithe young man, but Jean, a maniac in his rage, was a match for two of him. In the end he had to be dragged off the Marquis, who tottered to his feet, wiped the blood off his face, and made some vague threats. But he was evidently in the house of his enemies.

“You shall pay for this, every one of you!” he shouted; “I will call you all as witnesses to this assault.”

“Do!” cried FranÇois; “I will go before the police and swear that you struck this young lady and were threatening to kill her, and were only prevented by Jean Leroux holding you, and that you have made threats against the lives of all of us. Of course, the whole affair will come before your colonel, and then we shall see what we shall see. And by the way, don’t ask me to supper with you any more, for I wouldn’t be seen with a low dog like you. And in particular, I disown you as a relative.”

There was nothing for it but for the Marquis to leave. He got downstairs as best he could, limping, with no look whatever of a bridegroom, slipped into the carriage, and was driven away.

Jean then went to wash off the stains of his encounter, and Diane disappeared.

FranÇois ran off to tell the story to the good Bishop, who dearly loved gossip.

When they met for dinner at noon, Diane was not present, but on the table lay a letter addressed to Madame Grandin. It read:

“Dear Madame Grandin: I thank you and Monsieur Grandin for all your kindness to me, and I thank FranÇois for teaching me to act, and Jean for teaching me to sing and being always good to me. I don’t know how I can live without all of you, but I cannot face you after what has happened. I shall be far away when you read this. Take care of the lady and the little girl in my room until they are able to go away. You will find one hundred and fifty-two francs in the cupboard in the kitchen, and I want you to use that for them and buy a plenty of milk for the little child. Don’t tell them where it comes from; I think they are very badly off for money. Oh, Madame Grandin! truly, there is a thorn in every heart, but—”

Here the sheet was blotted apparently with tears, but at the bottom was scribbled the signature, “Diane Dorian.”