So thinking one dark night, as he entered the house, he ran against some one who was coming down the steps.
“Is that you, Bélisaire?”
There was no reply, but as Jack pushed open the door, he saw that he was not mistaken, that Bélisaire had been there.
Clarisse was in the corridor, shivering with the cold, and so absorbed by the letter she was reading in the gleam of light from the half open door of the parlor, that she did not even look up as Jack went in. The letter evidently contained some startling intelligence, and the boy suddenly remembered having that day heard that Chariot had lost a large sum of money in gambling with the crew of an English ship that had just arrived at Nantes from Calcutta.
In the parlor Zénaïde and Maugin were alone.
Père Rondic had gone to Chateaubriand and would not return until the next day, which did not prevent her future husband from dining with them. He sat in the large arm-chair, his feet comfortably extended. While Zénaïde, carefully dressed, and her hair arranged by her stepmother, laid the table, this calm and reasonable lover entertained her by an estimate of the prices of the various grains, indigos, and oils that entered the port of Nantes. And such a wonderful prestidigitateur is love that Zénaïde was moved to the depths of her soul by these details, and listened to them as to music.
Jack’s entrance disturbed the lovers. “Ah, here is Jack! I had no idea it was so late!” cried the girl. “And mamma, where is she?”
Clarisse came in, pale but calm.
“Poor woman!” thought Jack, as he watched her trying to smile, to talk, and to eat, swallowing at intervals great draughts of water, as if to choke down some terrible emotion. Zénaïde was blind to all this. She had lost her own appetite, and watched her soldier’s plate, seeming delighted at the rapidity with which the delicate morsels disappeared.
Maugin talked well, and ate and drank with marvellous appetite; he weighed his words as carefully as he did the square bits into which he cut his bread; he held his wine-glass to the light, testing and scrutinizing it each time he drank. A dinner, with him, was evidently a matter of importance as well as of time. This evening it seemed as if Clarisse could not endure it; she rose from the table, went to the window, listened to the rattling of the hail on the glass, and then turning round, said,—