they gazed at him. But we have travelled far since Joseph’s time, and the preoccupations we experience at dessert are not so absorbing nowadays.

‘But there, what a consummate idiot, with all her cleverness, your marquise was, to have told you about such a thing!’ at last said the duchesse, who condescended to be cynical, but who cut neither her fingers nor anything else with the gold dessert-knife she still held in her hand.

Meantime the Comtesse de Chiffrevas was gazing fixedly into the depths of a glass of Rhine-wine, a green crystal glass, as profound and mysterious as her own reverie.

‘And the little witch?’ she asked.

‘Oh, she was dead—she died quite young—married to somebody in the country—when her mother told me the story,’ Ravila quietly replied.

‘But for that…’ said the duchesse thoughtfully.

Translated by E. Boyd