“I am Mademoiselle Vicaud—Claire Vicaud,” this young woman said, “and you are Mr. Damier. My mother is expecting you; she will be here directly.”
Perhaps he felt, as she smiled gravely upon him, it was the power in her face, rather than its beauty, that had dazzled him. Already he discovered something almost repellent in its enchantment. Her eyes were dark, with a still, an impenetrable darkness; a small mole emphasized the scarlet curve of her upper lip; the lines of cheek and brow were wonderfully beautiful. It was, indefinably, in the soft spreading of the nostrils, in the deeply sunk corners of the mouth, that one felt a plebeian touch. There was nothing, however, of this quality in the carriage of her head, with its heavy tiara of dark-red hair, nor in the dignity and grace of her figure; and nothing in her, except some vague suggestion in this grace and dignity, reminded him of the photograph; and he was at once deeply glad of this, glad that Mademoiselle Vicaud resembled her father—he felt sure she did—and not her mother.
She seated herself, indicating to him a chair near her, and observed him with the same grave smile, and in an unembarrassed silence, while he spoke of his pleasure at being in Paris, at finding them there. Damier himself was not unembarrassed; found it difficult to talk trivialities to this Hebe while thrilling with expectation; and Mademoiselle Vicaud, unable otherwise to interpret it, may well have seen in her own radiant apparition the cause of his slight disturbance.
“But you are not old,” she said to him.
“Did you expect that?” he inquired.
“Then you are not a friend of Mamma’s—a friend of her youth, I mean? I don’t think that she was quite sure who you were.”
“It is only through an old friend of hers that—I hope to become another,” Damier finished, smiling.
“Well, pour commencer, you may be our young friend—we have time, you and I, before we need think of being old ones. I get tired of old things, myself.”
“Even of old friends?” Damier asked, amused at her air of placid familiarity.
“Ah, that depends.”