"So it was play which put those black circles round your eyes?" Sabine
said to him in a feeble voice.

The words made the doctor, the mother, and the viscountess tremble,
and they all three looked at one another covertly. Calyste turned as
red as a cherry.

"That's what comes of nursing a child," said Dommanget brutally, but
cleverly. "Husbands are lonely when separated from their wives, and
they go to the club and play. But you needn't worry over the thirty
thousand francs which Monsieur le baron lost last night--"

"Thirty thousand francs!" cried Ursula, in a silly tone.

"Yes, I know it," replied Dommanget. "They told me this morning at the
house of the young Duchesse Berthe de Maufrigneuse that it was
Monsieur de Trailles who won that money from you," he added, turning
to Calyste. "Why do you play with such men? Frankly, monsieur le
baron, I can well believe you are ashamed of it."

Seeing his mother-in-law, a pious duchess, the young viscountess, a
happy woman, and the old /accoucheur/, a confirmed egotist, all three
lying like a dealer in bric-a-brac, the kind and feeling Calyste
understood the greatness of the danger, and two heavy tears rolled
from his eyes and completely deceived Sabine.

"Monsieur," she said, sitting up in bed and looking angrily at
Dommanget, "Monsieur du Guenic can lose thirty, fifty, a hundred
thousand francs if it pleases him, without any one having a right to
think it wrong or read him a lesson. It is far better that Monsieur de