“This is odious, upon my word,” said Taverney, shrugging his shoulders: “there is only one woman in the world who does not think anything of herself and I am cursed with her for my daughter. What atrociously bad luck! Andrea!”
But she was already at the foot of the stairs. She turned.
“At least, say you are not well,” he suggested. “That will make you interesting at all events.”
“There will be no telling lies there, father, for I feel really very ill at present.”
“That is the last straw,” grumbled the baron. “A sick girl on my hands, with the favor of the King lost and Richelieu cutting me dead! Plague take the nun!” he mumbled.
He entered his daughter’s room to ferret about for some confirmation of his suspicions.
During this time Andrea had been fighting with an unknown indisposition as she made her way through the shrubbery to the Little Trianon. Standing on the threshold, Lady Noailles made her understand that she was late and that she was looking out for her.
The titular reader to the Dauphiness, an abbe, was reciting the news, above all desonating on the rumor that a riot had been caused by the scarcity of corn and that five of the ringleaders had been arrested and sent to jail.
Andrea entered. The Dauphiness was in one of her wayward periods and this time preferred the gossip to the book; she regarded Andrea as a spoilsport. So she remarked that she ought not to have missed her time and that things good in themselves were not always good out of season.
Abashed by the reproach and particularly its injustice, the vice-reader replied nothing, though she might have said her father detained her and that her not feeling well had retarded her walk. Oppressed and dazed, she hung her head, and closing her eyes as if about to die, she would have fallen only for the Duchess of Noailles catching her.