“What! Who has told us? All Paris knows it!”
“Well,” said the cousin, looking at the carpet and apparently communing with himself—he always had an air of self-communing, “I suppose it’s true!” He drank the tenth of a teaspoonful of coffee.
“Eh, well, my friend,” the Tante commented. “I do not know if thou hast done well. That did not cost thee too dear, and she had a good-hearted face.” Tante spoke with an air of special intimacy, because she and the cousin had kept house together for some years at one period.
“Thou hast seen her, Tante?” the hostess asked, surprised a little out of the calm in which she was crocheting.
“Have I seen her? I believe it well! I caught them together once when I was driving in the Bois.”
“That was Antoinette,” said the cousin.
“It was not Antoinette,” said the Tante. “And thou hast no need to say it. Thou quittedst Antoinette in ‘96, before I had begun to hire that carriage. I recall it to myself perfectly.”
“I suppose now it will be the grand spree,” said the hostess, “during several months.”
“The grand spree!” Tante broke in caustically. “Have no fear. The grand spree—that is not his kind. It is not he who will scatter his money with those birds. He is not so stupid as that.” She laughed drily.
“Is she rosse, the Tante, all the same!” the host, flowing over with good nature, comforted his cousin.