But she became a habitue, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood and early girlhood had passed.
One evening, she arrived late.

She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with rebuking chilliness.

A marked gravity governed them both of late; they shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason to complain.
"A fresh craze!" thought Cesarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.
Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.
The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Cesarine at Munich and was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a companionship had not been accepted.

"All her pets had married well," she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.
Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the chateau; and, tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved chair.

It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers.