"No one?"
"No one. You see to what an outrage you have exposed me!"
She smiled, her eyes half-closed, as she removed with the ends of her fingers a crumb that had lodged in his long black whiskers; but her transparent little nostrils quivered with awe-inspiring eloquence.
"Oh! she will come," said the banker, with his mouth full. "I am sure she will come."
A rustling of silk, of a train being adjusted in the adjoining room, caused the baroness to turn her head quickly. To the great delight of the cluster of "bales" in one corner, who were watching everything, it was not she who was expected.
She bore but little resemblance to Mademoiselle Afchin, the tall, graceful blonde, with the tired features and irreproachable toilet, worthy in every respect to bear a name as illustrious as that of Dr. Jenkins. In the last two or three months the beautiful Madame Jenkins had changed greatly, had grown much older. There comes a time in the life of a woman who has long retained her youth, when the years which have passed over her head without leaving a wrinkle write themselves down pitilessly all at once in ineffaceable marks. We no longer say when we see her: "How lovely she is!" but, "She must have been very lovely." And that cruel fashion of speaking of the past, of referring to a distant period what was a visible fact but yesterday, constitutes a beginning of old age and of retirement,—a substitution of reminiscences for all past triumphs. Was it the disappointment of seeing the doctor's wife instead of Madame Jansoulet, or was the discredit which the Duc de Mora's death had brought upon the fashionable doctor destined to overflow upon her who bore his name? There was something of both those causes, and perhaps of another as well, in the cold welcome which the baroness accorded Madame Jenkins. A murmured greeting, a few hurried words, and she returned to the battalion of noble dames who were nibbling away with great zest. The salon became animated under the influence of the Spanish wines. People no longer whispered; they talked. Lamps were brought in and imparted additional brilliancy to the occasion, but announced that it was very near its end, as several persons who had no interest in the great event were already moving toward the door. And the Jansoulets did not come.
Suddenly there was a heavy, hurried step. The Nabob appeared, alone, buttoned into his black frock-coat, correctly gloved and cravatted, but with distorted features and haggard eye, still trembling from the terrible scene in which he had just taken part.
She had refused to come.
In the morning he had told Madame's women to have her dressed at three o'clock, as he was accustomed to do whenever he took the Levantine abroad with him, for he found it necessary to impart motion to that indolent creature, who, being incapable of assuming any responsibility whatsoever, allowed others to think, to decide and to act for her, although she was quite willing to go wherever he chose, when she was once started. And he relied upon that willingness to enable him to take her to Hemerlingue's house. But when, after breakfast, Jansoulet, fully dressed, magnificent, perspiring in his struggles to put on his gloves, sent to ask if Madame would soon be ready, he was told that Madame was not going out. It was a serious crisis, so serious that, discarding the mediation of valets and maids, through whom their conjugal interviews were usually conducted, he ran upstairs four stairs at a time, and entered the Levantine's luxurious apartments like a gust of the mistral.
She was still in bed, clad in the ample open-work tunic in silk of two colors, which the Moors call a djebba, and in one of their gold-embroidered caps from which her beautiful heavy black mane escaped in tangled masses around her moon-like face, flushed by the hearty meal she had just finished. The sleeves of the djebba were turned back, disclosing two enormous, shapeless arms, laden with bracelets, with long slender chains wandering amid a wilderness of little mirrors, red chaplets, boxes of perfume, microscopic pipes, cigarette cases, the trivial toy-shop display of a Moorish beauty at her hour for rising.