unfortunate just from her bath, fresh, embellished, and breakfasting
with a very good appetite. He admired the grace with which his angel
ate her boiled eggs, and he marvelled at the beauty of the gold
service, a present from a monomaniac lord, for whom Conti had composed
a few ballads on /ideas/ of the lord, who afterwards published them as
his own!

Calyste listened entranced to the witty speeches of his idol, whose
great object was to amuse him, until she grew angry and wept when he
rose to leave her. He thought he had been there only half an hour, but
it was past three before he reached home. His handsome English horse,
a present from the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, was so bathed in sweat
that it looked as though it had been driven through the sea. By one of
those chances which all jealous women prepare for themselves, Sabine
was at a window which looked on the court-yard, impatient at Calyste's
non-return, uneasy without knowing why. The condition of the horse
with its foaming mouth surprised her.

"Where can he have come from?"

The question was whispered in her ear by that power which is not
exactly consciousness, nor devil, nor angel; which sees, forebodes,
shows us the unseen, and creates belief in mental beings, creatures
born of our brains, going and coming and living in the world invisible
of ideas.

"Where do you come from, dear angel?" Sabine said to Calyste, meeting
him on the first landing of the staircase. "Abd-el-Kader is nearly
foundered. You told me you would be gone but a moment, and I have been
waiting for you these three hours."