"I should say as much, you bad girl. Whose fault is it?"
In the saddest recess of her memory Felicia found the date of the rupture between them, coincident in her mind with another date when her youth died in a never-to-be-forgotten scene.
"What have you been doing all this time, my love?"
"Oh! always the same thing—nothing worth talking about."
"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, little brave heart. It is giving your life to others, is it not?"
But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately at a point straight before her, and Felicia, turning to see to whom that smile was addressed, saw Paul de Géry replying to Mademoiselle Joyeuse's shy and blushing salutation.
"Do you know each other, pray?"
"Do I know Monsieur Paul! I should think so. We talk of you often enough. Has he never told you?"
"Never. He is terribly sly—"
She stopped abruptly as a light flashed through her mind; and, paying no heed to de Géry, who came forward to do homage to her triumph, she leaned hastily toward Aline and whispered to her. The other blushed, protested with smiles, with inaudible words: "How can you imagine such a thing? At my age. A grandmamma!" And at last she grasped her father's arm to escape that friendly raillery.