CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSPIRACY DISCOVERED.
The festival was over, the last guests had taken leave of Baroness de Simonie, and the servants and lackeys were gliding noiselessly through the empty rooms to extinguish the lights in the chandeliers and candelabra, and here and there push the scattered pieces of furniture into place.
Baroness de Simonie had gone to her boudoir, but though it was late at night she seemed to feel no disposition to retire to rest, nor was there the slightest expression of weariness on her beautiful face; her eyes sparkled as brightly as they had just flashed upon her guests, and there was no change in the proud carriage of her head, or of the tall, slender figure, still robed in white satin veiled with silver-embroidered white crepe.

The diadem of diamonds still glittered in her hair, and clasps of the same brilliant gems adorned her neck and her bare white arms.
Madame de Simonie was pacing up and down her boudoir with hasty, impetuous steps; her whole being seemed intensely agitated.

Sometimes she paused at the door to listen, then with panting breath resumed her restless movement to and fro, while her scarlet lips murmured: "He does not come yet.
Something extraordinary must have happened.

But what?
What?
Can he be in danger?
Oh, my God, if this terrible week were once over, that--But hush! I hear footsteps; it is he." Springing to the door with a single bound like a lioness, she tore it open.
"Is it you, father ?" "Yes, it is I," he answered, entering the room and cautiously locking the door behind him.
"Thank heaven that you are here, father!" she sighed, with an air of relief.
"What ?" he asked, smiling, "has my Leonore again become so affectionate a daughter that she is anxious about her father if he is suddenly called away at night?
For you have been anxious about me--about me and no one else--have you not ?" "No, not for you," she cried impetuously, "for him, for him alone.

Tell me that he is not in danger, that he has nothing to do with the matter on whose account you were so suddenly called away!" "I swear it, Leonore.