His wife is a friend of mine--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself, "she might help us; she is very bold with her husband; her fortune is in her own right.

Yes, she could save you." "Dear heart, I have but a few hours left; let us go to her this evening, now, instantly," said Madame de Vandenesse, throwing herself into Madame du Tillet's arms with a burst of tears.
"I can't go out at eleven o'clock at night," replied her sister.
"My carriage is here." "What are you two plotting together ?" said du Tillet, pushing open the door of the boudoir.
He came in showing a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiable expression.

The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation of the two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of his carriage-wheels on entering the court-yard.

The countess, in whom the habits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had left her had developed both wit and shrewdness,--qualities repressed in her sister by marital despotism, which simply continued that of their mother,--saw that Eugenie's terror was on the point of betraying them, and she evaded that danger by a frank answer.
"I thought my sister richer than she is," she replied, looking straight at her brother-in-law.

"Women are sometimes embarrassed for money, and do not wish to tell their husbands, like Josephine with Napoleon.