I felt by no means flattered.
"Regardez done!" said she, pulling me by the sleeve, just as I was standing up, a little behind her chair, looking at the stage. "That lady in the blue glacé never takes her eyes from our box! She points us out to the gentleman who is with her--do look!"
I turned my glass in the direction to which she pointed, and recognised Madame de Marignan!
I turned hot and cold, red and white, all in one moment, and shrank back like a snail that has been touched, or a sea-anemone at the first dig of the naturalist.
"Does she know you?" asked Josephine.
"I--I--probably--that is to say--I have met her in society."
"And who is the gentleman?"
That was just what I was wondering. It was not Delaroche. It was no one whom I had ever seen before. It was a short, fat, pale man, with a bald head, and a ribbon in his button-hole.
"Is he her husband?" pursued Josephine.
The suggestion flashed upon me like a revelation. Had I not heard that M. de Marignan was coming home from Algiers? Of course it was he. No doubt of it. A little vulgar, fat, bald man.... Pshaw, just the sort of a husband that she deserved!