“There’s somebody in the drawing-room—a lady from the South.”
“Aunt Portal?”
“You shall see—”
It was not Mme. Portal, but a saucy Provençal girl whose deep curtsy in the rustic way came to an end in a peal of laughter.
“Hortense!”
Her skirt reaching to the tops of her black shoes, her waist increased by the folds of tulle belonging to the big scarf, her face framed among the falling waves of hair kept in place by a little bonnet made of cut velvet and embroidered with butterflies in jet, Hortense looked very like the chatos whom one sees on Sunday practising their coquetries on the Tilting Field at Arles, or else walking, two and two, with lowered lashes, through the pretty columns of St. Trophyme cloisters, whose denticulated architecture goes very well with those ruddy Saracen reds and with the ivory color of the church in which a flame of a consecrated candle trembles in the full daylight.
“Just see how pretty she is!” said her mother, standing in ecstasy before that lively personification of the land of her youthful days. Rosalie, on the other hand, shuddered with an inexplicable sadness, as if that costume had taken her sister far, far away from her.
“Well, that is a fantastic idea! It is very becoming to you, but I like you far better as a Parisian girl. And who dressed you so well?”
“Audiberte Valmajour. She has just gone out.”
“How often she comes here!” said Rosalie, going into their room to take off her bonnet. “What a friendship it is! I shall begin to get jealous.”