Numa turned scarlet and a flash dried the tenderness from his eyes in a moment.
“Where is she? In your room?”
“Monsignor Lipmann was there already,” said Lappara, smiling a little at the idea of the possible meeting. “I put her downstairs in the large drawing-room. The rehearsal is over.”
“Very well; I will go.”
“Don’t forget the Council,” Méjean tried to say, but Roumestan did not hear and sprang down the steep stairway leading to the Minister’s private apartments on the reception floor.
He had steered clear of serious entanglements since the trouble over Mme. d’Escarbès, avoiding adventures of the heart or of vanity, because he feared an open rupture that might ruin his household forever. He was not a model husband, certainly, but the marriage contract, though soiled and full of holes, was still intact. Though once well warned, Rosalie was much too honest and high-minded to spy jealously upon her husband, and although she was always anxious, never sought for proofs. Even at that moment, if Numa had had any idea of the influence this new fancy of his was to have upon his life, he would have hastened to ascend the stairs much more quickly than he had come down them; but our destiny delights to come to us in mask and domino, doubling the pleasure of the first meeting with the touch of mystery. How could Numa divine that any danger threatened from the pretty little girl whom he had seen from his carriage window crossing the courtyard several days before, jumping over the puddles, holding her umbrella in one hand and her coquettish skirts gathered up in the other, with all the smartness of a true Parisian woman, her long lashes curving above a saucy, turned-up nose, her blond hair, twisted in an American knot behind, which the moist air had turned to curls at the ends, and her shapely, finely-curved leg quite at ease above her high-heeled boot—that was all he had seen of her. So during the evening he had said to De Lappara as if it were a matter of very little importance:
“I will wager, that little charmer I met in the courtyard this morning was on her way to see you.”
“Yes, your Excellency, she came to see me, but it was on your account she came.”
And then he had named little Bachellery.
“What! the débutante at the Bouffes? How old is she? Why, she’s hardly more than a child!”