“I know no more about it than you,” she replied, a little harshly.
“The reason I asked is because there are only pictures of men in the drawing-room; it is not very polite on their part. I should much prefer that there should be portraits of our grandmothers; it would be so amusing to see the beautiful dresses that they wore in those days rather than those old beards which frighten me. But perhaps they do not put young girls in genealogical trees,” she continued, in a musing tone.
“You might ask Monsieur de Gerfaut; he wishes to please you too much to refuse to tell you,” said Clemence, with an almost ironical smile.
“Do you think so?” asked Aline, innocently. “I should never dare to ask him.”
“You are still afraid of him, then?”
“A little,” replied the young girl, lowering her eyes, for she felt her face flush.
This symptom made Madame de Bergenheim more vexed than ever, and she continued, in a cutting, sarcastic tone:
“Has your cousin d’Artigues written you lately?”
Mademoiselle de Bergenheim raised her eyes and looked at her for a moment with an indifferent air:
“I don’t know,” she said, at last.