His official's inventory of her characteristics fitted Mademoiselle de Bellecour in every detail.
"Admit her, Brutus," he commanded, and his voice had a husky sound.
Then, turning to Cecile, "You will give me leave ?" he said, cloaking rude dismissal in its politest form.
"Assuredly," she answered bitterly, making shift to go.

"Your visitor is no doubt political ?" she half-asked half-asserted.
But he made no answer as he held the door for her, and bowed low as she passed out.

With a white face and lips tightly compressed she went, and half-way on the stairs she met a handsome woman, tall and of queenly bearing, who ascended.

Her toilette lacked the elaborateness of Cecile's, but she carried it with an air which not all the modistes of France could have succeeded in imparting to the Citoyenne Deshaix.
So dead was Robespierre's niece to every sense of fitness that, having drawn aside to let the woman pass, she stood gazing after her until she disappeared round the angle of the landing.

Then, in a fury, she swept from the house and into her waiting coach, and as she drove back to Duplay's in the Rue St.Honore she was weeping bitterly in her jealous rage..