"No, indeed, and I don't care anyhow," was the retort given with perhaps unnecessary fierceness.
"But," cooed Madame soothingly, "one should care a little, chère Haidee, for the sake of the poor good Poulot. She is no doubt a very fine lady, the charming Mistress Valentine, but we do not wish to see Rupert suffer as Sacha did."
The subtle words bit into Haidee's heart like acid on an old wound. She had been very much touched at the Comtesse's act in writing to the Directrice for permission to call at the Lycée. And it was very gratifying that Madame de Vervanne should have arrived in a motor which also contained a young lieutenant of Dragons in uniform, and which stood growling and puffing at the Lycée gates, filling all the girls with excitement and envy. Haidee's vanity too was greatly flattered by the tender and confidential manner of the older woman, who never forgot also to tell her how pretty and clever she was and to give recognition to the fact that she was now seventeen. So different to Val's manner of treating her as though she were still a child and quite unable to arrange her own destiny. A curious, fresh access of fury was aroused in Haidee's breast by the Comtesse's tale of Rupert's devotion to Val. Rupert had been to see Haidee twice. He was stationed at Fontainebleau, doing his second year of military service, and when he came to the Lycée accompanied by his sister Celine he was wearing the ordinary private soldier's uniform, and looking very handsome in the gay red and blue. All the girls had admired him immensely, and Haidee herself liked him extraordinarily better than in Mascaret. While Celine talked with some of the girls she knew, Rupert and Haidee had wandered about the gardens, talking about Sacha and little incidents of their happy time together that now, looked at from a little distance of time, seemed wonderfully perfumed and beautified. The remembrance of these two walks with him made Haidee burn with sudden indignation against Val.
The Comtesse had begun to talk about other things, made Haidee show her all round Pavilion Mauve and the big roomy schoolhouse, then take her out into the grounds, along the paths that wound amongst other Pavilions, the Red, the Blue, the Rose--and over broad lawns that in the soft mild air of Versailles were green, even in winter. In the middle of one of the lawns was a little lake bordered by strange-leaved dwarf-like bushes that in summer were thick with crimson flowers, but which now stretched out frail black branches to the silent fountain. Dead leaves rustled and cracked under the Comtesse's high-heeled shoes as they walked. She waved her hand at the well-kept tennis courts.
"But you are charmingly well here!" she cried, in her gay little soprano. "Oh, to be young again and lovely like you, my child! Not all the Mistress Valdanas could take away from me what I wanted!"
She returned meditatively to the former subject.
"But who is it that resides in the third atelier think you, Haidee? Curiosity consumes and burns me. There is a door leading into it from Madame's atelier. Twice she left us to go swiftly and return. Once when the door opened I heard a man cough. Tell me?--it could not be the mysterious papa returned, could it?"
Haidee gazed at her blankly.
"There is a mysterious papa, is it not?" If the curiosity of the Comtesse had not always been pleasantly glossed by pretty childish gestures and rippling laughter, it might have seemed vulgar. Haidee was not clever enough to realise this, and she was staggered by the whole strange story, which sounded unlike Val in every detail, but even in her amazement she was not going to confide to a comparative stranger the tangled domestic history of the family. If she had no feeling but one of resentment for Val, she could still be loyal to Westenra.
"Oh yes, there is a papa--Bran's papa of course, and my guardian; but it would n't be him."