"To be sure, there is that poor English lad whom she drags about with her, to play propriety," continued she; "but do you suppose the world is blinded by so shallow an artifice?"
"What English lad?" I asked, startled out of all sense of precaution, and desperately resolved to know the worst.
"What English lad? Why, Hippolyte, you are more stupid than ever! I pointed him out to you the other night at the Comedie Française--a pale, handsome boy, of about nineteen or twenty, with brown curling hair, and very fine eyes, which were riveted on Madame de Marignan the whole evening. Poor fellow! I cannot help pitying him."
"Then--then, you think she really does not love him?" I said. And this time my voice was hoarse enough, without any need of feigning.
"Love him! Ridiculous! What does such a woman understand by love? Certainly neither the sentiment nor the poetry of it! Tush, Hippolyte! I do not wish to be censorious; but every one knows that ever since M. de Marignan has been away in Algiers, that woman has had, not one devoted admirer, but a dozen; and now that her husband is coming back...."
"Coming back! ... her husband!" I echoed, half rising in my place, and falling back again, as if stunned. "Good heavens! is she not a widow?"
It was now the lady's turn to be startled.
"A widow!" she repeated. "Why, you know as well as I that--Dieu! To whom I am speaking?"
"Madame," I said, as steadily as my agitation would let me, "I beg you not to be alarmed. I am not, it is true, the person whom you have supposed; but--Nay, I implore you...."
She here uttered a quick cry, and darted forward for the check-string. Arresting her hand half way, respectfully but firmly, I went on:--