“Or she him. I do not remember. I do not know where the fault lay.”
“And this is the husband’s child?”
“Ah, that, ma chère, is more than I can tell you,” said the lady of the earrings with a touch of melancholy humour. “But she, also, is beautiful. I find her more beautiful than the mother.”
“But with less charm,” said the stout lady, evidently of madame Dumont’s opinion, and she had even something of madame Dumont’s expression in pronouncing it. “La mère est toute-à-fait séduisante. C’est une femme exquise.”
“But the child has more distinction,” said the lady of the earrings.
“It is a head that would tell well on the stage,” the stout lady suggested. “And speaking of the theatre I saw mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine bathing here the other day. She is very well in the water.”
“Yes. She is staying near madame Vervier at Les Vaudettes. She is a friend. The child is perhaps destined for the theatre.—I can hardly imagine mademoiselle Fontaine in the water,” and the lady of the earrings smiled. “I can hardly see her off the stage.”
“Ah, she is very well in the water,” the stout lady again asserted. “Elle est fausse maigre. And she swims as well as she acts. What a talent it is?”
“A little shrill, a little metallic, perhaps,” said the lady of the earrings; but the stout lady was quite secure of her admiration and said that she considered mademoiselle Fontaine the foremost of their young actresses.
A little silence followed, and Giles, who had contemplated withdrawal, settled himself again to his book when the talk, as the friends resumed it, turned on their families. The stout lady spoke of her Jacques at the Ecole Polytechnique; of le petit Charlot and his love for music. The lady of the earrings spoke of Andrée, who would soon be old enough to marry, and of Grand-père, left up at the white house on the cliff with Yvonne to entertain him. Ma tante arrived to-morrow to open Les Mouettes and was bringing a religieuse, an admirable woman, who was to take charge of Grand-père. “Quel homme surprenant,” said the stout lady, and the lady in grey said that he was, indeed, wonderful. “Eighty-two, and interesting himself still in all our lives. I was discussing Andrée’s marriage with him yesterday. We are fortunate, indeed, in having kept him so long with us.”