“Of course she is—that is to say as happy as it is proper for her to be under the circumstances. O, yes! it is quite consistent with your illogic, is it not, to give that sigh. If I had told you she was miserable, your face, no doubt, would have lighted up with a holy joy.”
“Is the wedding-day fixed?”
“It will be, sure and soon enough, when once we can cast our black. This misfortune—it is enough to make a saint blaspheme. But for its happening, it might likely have been fast-bind by this time; and then her felicity would have been her husband’s affair, and all would-be gallants might forego their tender concern—for her happiness, God preserve us!”
“If she is happy and contented, Fanchette, what makes you so angry over the postponement?”
“It aggravates me so to see you turn up again, when we had all thought you comfortably laid.”
“Ah-ha! Now we are revealing. Who are the ‘we’?”
“You are like to find out soon enough, unless you disappear as you came. I can tell you, monsieur, you went none too soon in the first instance.”
“I was beginning to realise myself that I was getting unpopular. And yet I was only too attentive to my task. Fanchette?”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to raise your veil.”