“They are at lessons. You cannot see them.”
“And madame?”
“She is asleep. No one sees her before three o’clock.”
It seemed to astonish the good woman a little that any one could stay in bed so late; but the tact which guides a refined nature, even without education, prevented her from saying anything before the servants, and she asked for Paul de Gery.
“He is abroad.”
“Bompain Jean-Baptiste, then.”
“He is with monsieur at the sitting.”
Her great gray eyebrows wrinkled.
“It does not matter; take up my trunk just the same.”
And with a little malicious twinkle of her eye, a proud revenge for their insolent looks, she added: “I am his mother.”