“You deepen your shadows too much,” he said; “for a daughter more like yourself your life would not be a narrow one.” He paused, for, though she did not lift her eyes, a faint flush passed over Madame Vicaud’s face.
“I see all your efforts to widen it,” he went on, hurrying away from what he felt to have been an unfortunate comparison, “the flowers you strew: intellectual, artistic interests, friends that you hope she may find congenial, your delightful teas.”
“Oh—our teas!” Madame Vicaud interrupted, smiling with a rather satirical playfulness. “No; our delightful and ‘cultured’ little teas can hardly atone to Claire. She should have the gaiety, the variety, the colored experience that I had in my youth. I can well imagine that to Claire’s palate the nourishment I offer her is rather tasteless. She needs excitement, admiration, appreciation, an outlet for her energy, her intelligence.”
Damier seized the opportunity—it was, he thought, very propitious—again to ask her when he might bring some of his friends in Paris to see her, suggesting that so Claire’s social diet might be pleasantly diversified. Madame Vicaud had more than once evaded—gracefully, kindly, and decisively—all question of renewing broken ties with her country-people, or making new ones, and now, again, she slightly flushed, as though for a moment finding him tactless and inopportune; but only for a moment: when she lifted her eyes to him, it was with all their quiet confidence of gaze.
“I hardly know that that would be for Claire’s happiness or good. One must have the means of widening one’s environment if it is to be with comfort to one’s self. Our means are too limited to be diffused over a larger area. You must not forget, my friend, that we are very poor. I do not like accepting where I can offer nothing.”
“That is a false though a charming delicacy,” said Damier. “You give yourself; and I hope you won’t refuse to now, for I have almost promised you to Lady Surfex; she is very anxious to meet you.”
Madame Vicaud was silent for some moments, her eyes downcast to the work where she put firm, rapid stitches; then, in a voice that had suddenly grown icy, “Her mother did not recognize me one day, years ago, when she met me walking with my husband,” she said.
It was now Damier’s turn to flush. He nerved himself, after a moment, to say:
“But this is not the mother.”
“No; and my husband is dead: otherwise the wish to meet me would not overcome that disability.”