“Always when the boys and girls are merry.”
“What ennui! the noise of those abominable tambourines could be heard as far as the château yesterday. One could not get one’s afternoon siesta.”
“Have a cup of chocolate, Nicolette!” Micheline suggested by way of a diversion as the conversation threatened to drop altogether.
“No, thank you, Micheline!” Nicolette replied, “I had some chocolate before I came.”
It was all so awkward, and so very, very unreal. To Nicolette it seemed as if she were in a dream: the old Comtesse’s jewelled comb, the brocade chair, the silver on the table, it could not be real. The old château of Ventadour was the home of old tradition, not of garish modernity, it lived in a rarefied old-world atmosphere that had rendered it very dear to Nicolette, and all this rich paraphernalia of good living and fine clothes threw a mantle of falsehood almost of vulgarity over the place.
Nicolette found nothing more to say, and Micheline looked hurt and puzzled that her friend did not enter into the spirit of this beautiful unreality. She appeared to be racking her brain for something to say: but no one helped her out. The old Comtesse had not opened her lips since Nicolette had come upon the scene. Bertrand was too busily engaged in devouring his beautiful fiancée with his eyes to pay heed to any one else, and the lovely Rixende was even at this moment smothering a yawn behind her upraised fan.
It was the Comtesse Marcelle, anxious and gentle, who relieved the tension:
“Micheline,” she said, “why don’t you take Nicolette into the boudoir and show her——?” Then she smiled and added with a pathetic little air of gaiety: “you know what?”
This suggestion delighted Micheline.
“Of course,” she cried excitedly. “I was forgetting. Come, Nicolette, and I will show you something that will surprise you.”