Juliette was then a mere slip of a girl, an old man's child, the
spoilt darling of his last happy years. She had retained some of the
melancholy which had characterised her mother, the gentle lady who had
endured so much so patiently, and who had bequeathed this final tender
burden--her baby girl--to the briljant, handsome husband whom she
had so deeply loved, and so often forgiven.

When the Duc de Marny entered the final awesome stage of his gilded
career, that deathlike life which he dragged on for ten years wearily
to the grave, Juliette became his only joy, his one gleam of happiness
in the midst of torturing memories.

In her deep, tender eyes he would see mirrored the present, the future
for her, and would forget his past, with all its gaieties, its mad,
merry years, that meant nothing now but bitter regrets, and endless
rosary of the might-have-beens.

And then there was the boy. The little Vicomte, the future Duc de
Marny, who would in _his_ life and with _his_ youth recreate the glory
of the family, and make France once more ring with the echo of brave
deeds and gallant adventures, which had made the name of Marny so
glorious in camp and court.

The Vicomte was not his father's love, but he was his father's pride,
and from the depths of his huge, cushioned arm-chair, the old man
would listen with delight to stories from Versailles and Paris, the
young Queen and the fascinating Lamballe, the latest play and the
newest star in the theatrical firmament. His feeble, tottering mind
would then take him back, along the paths of memory, to his own youth
and his own triumphs, and in the joy and pride in his son, he would