The mistress of the Villino is occasionally troubled with an inconvenient attack of conscience—sometimes she wonders if it is only the spirit of combativeness. In this instance, however, she felt it her duty to warn Madame Koelen.
It was a brief but thrilling conversation. Madame Koelen, her eldest little daughter on her knee, occasionally burying her handsome countenance in the child’s soft hair, was as cool and determined, as silky and evasive as a lusty young snake. She had a parry for every statement; that she ate up her own words and manifestly lied from beginning to end did not affect her equanimity in the least. It was the Signora who was nonplussed. There is nothing before which the average honest mind remains more helpless than the deliberate liar.
Monsieur Mérino was her husband’s oldest friend. He was intimate with her whole family. She herself had known him for years. She was under his charge by her husband’s wishes. She had probably been aware of his marriage, but it had merely slipped her memory—not having his wife with him in Antwerp made one forget it. He was perfectly right to invite her young cousin to dine with him, since she had her brother to chaperon her. Certainly the brother was grown up and able to chaperon her! How extraordinary of us to imagine anything different!
“You are young, and you do not know life, my dear,” said the Signora at last, succeeding in keeping her temper, though with difficulty.
Madame Koelen bit into Maddy’s curls. It was quite evident she meant to know life. She had got her chance at last, and would not let it escape.
“I do not think,” said the unhappy hostess, firing her final shot, “that your husband would approve.”
The wife wheeled with a sudden savage movement, not unlike that of a snake about to strike.
“Ah, voilà qui m’est bien égal! That is my own affair!”
There was nothing more to be said. We wondered whether the Garde Civique had ever had such a glimpse of the real Geneviève Koelen as had just been revealed to us. Even to us it was startling.
An extraordinary hot afternoon it turned out. The sun was too blazing for us to venture beyond the shadow of the house. We sat on the terrace, and Madame Koelen wandered restlessly up and down, biting at a rose. The master of the Villino suddenly appeared among us, all smiles.