"Madame Constance is at mass," he said, "and mademoiselle is in the studio, alone. We have been working since six o'clock this morning," the child added, with a terrible yawn, which the dog caught on the wing, and which caused him to open wide his red mouth with its rows of sharp teeth.
Jenkins, whom we have seen enter the private apartments of the Minister of State with such perfect tranquillity, trembled slightly as he raised the portière that hid the open doorway of the studio. It was a magnificent sculptor's workroom, the rounded front being entirely of glass, with columns at either side: a large bay-window flooded with light and at that moment tinged with opal by the mist. More ornate than the majority of these workrooms, to which the daubs of plaster, the modelling tools, the clay scattered about and the splashes of water give something of the appearance of a mason's yard, this one blended a little coquetry with its artistic equipment. Green plants in every corner, a few good pictures hanging on the bare wall, and here and there—on oak pedestals—two or three of the works of Sébastien Ruys, whose very last work, not exhibited until after his death, was covered with black gauze.
The mistress of the establishment, Felicia Ruys, daughter of the famous sculptor, and already known to fame herself by two masterpieces, the bust of her father and that of the Duc de Mora, stood in the centre of the studio, at work modelling a figure. Dressed in a blue cloth riding-habit with long folds, a scarf of China silk twisted around her neck like a boy's cravat, her fine, black hair, gathered carelessly on top of her little Grecian head, Felicia was working with extreme zeal, which added to her beauty by the condensation, so to speak, the concentration of all her features in a scrutinizing and satisfied expression. But it changed abruptly on the doctor's arrival.
"Ah! it's you, is it?" she said brusquely, as if waking from a dream. "Did you ring? I did not hear."
And in the ennui, the weariness that suddenly overspread that lovely face, only the eyes retained their expression and brilliancy, eyes in which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins Pearls was heightened by a natural fierceness.
Oh! how humble and condescending the doctor's voice became, as he replied:
"Your work absorbs you completely, does it not, my dear Felicia? Is it something new that you're doing? I should say that it is very pretty."
He drew near to the still formless sketch in which a group of two animals could be vaguely distinguished, one of them, a greyhound, flying over the ground at a truly extraordinary pace.
"The idea came to me last night. I began to work by lamplight. My poor Kadour doesn't find it amusing," said the girl, looking with a caressing expression of affection at the greyhound, whose paws the small servant was trying to separate in order to force him into the proper pose.
Jenkins observed with a fatherly air that she did wrong to tire herself so, and added, taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions: