The word rang out hard and trenchant, as the old Comtesse sailed into the room. Micheline at once held her tongue, cowed as she always was in the presence of her autocratic grandmother.
“What is the discussion about?” grandmama asked coldly.
“My going to the mas,” Bertrand replied.
“To pay your respects to Jaume Deydier?” she asked, with a sneer.
“To see Nicolette,” Micheline broke in boldly. “Bertrand’s oldest friend.”
“Quite a nice child,” the old Comtesse owned with ironical graciousness. “She is at liberty to come and see Bertrand when she likes.”
“She is too proud——” Micheline hazarded, then broke down suddenly in her speech, because grandmama had raised her lorgnette, and was staring at her so disconcertingly that Micheline felt tears of mortification rising to her eyes.
“So,” grandmama said with that biting sarcasm which hurt so terribly, and which she knew so well how to throw into her voice. “So Mademoiselle Deydier is proud, is she? Too proud to pay her respects to the Comtesse de Ventadour. Ah, well! let her stay at home then. It is not for a Ventadour to hold out a hand of reconciliation to one of the Deydiers.”
“Reconciliation, grandmama?” Bertrand broke in quickly. “Has there been a quarrel then?”
For a moment it seemed to Bertrand’s keenly searching eyes as if the old Comtesse’s usually magnificent composure was slightly ruffled. Certain it is that a delicate flush rose to her withered cheeks, and her retort did not come with that trenchant rapidity to which she had accustomed her family and her household. However, the hesitation—if hesitation there was—was only momentary: an instant later she had shrugged her shoulders, elevated her eyebrows with her own inimitably grandiose air, and riposted coolly: