"Ma chère," she said with a laugh, "surely you have not been placing your husband on a pinnacle apart from other men! Armand as an anchorite! Mon Dieu!"
"No, of course not," said Horatia, battling for composure, "but..."
"But!" repeated Madame de Beaulieu, "But what? The young person is very well, in her way. And it is quite a year ago. Then you are shocked at me for knowing about it? Well, I grant you that we are not supposed to know these things, for it is not good taste for a gentleman to parade his love-affairs. But pardon, for perhaps in England (though I had not guessed it such an Eden of purity) these things do not exist, and I have soiled your innocence unnecessarily. Forgive me!"
All the distaste of Horatia's soul for the Marquise blossomed at this moment into a sudden flower of hatred. She wanted to stop the carriage and get out. What need to have told her! Her brain went on working furiously as they continued to drive up and down and the Marquise continued to talk. Horatia had heard a good many things since she came to Paris, but they had never seemed to touch her—she had never imagined that they could touch her.... It hurt; it burned like poison....
When she got back to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon she was told, to her surprise, that M. le Comte had already returned, and that he was waiting for her in her boudoir.
She had not expected him till night, and she went up the stairs very slowly. Part of her was crying out for joy that he was back, would have liked to run to him, to throw her arms round his neck and say to him, "Darling, I don't think of it, now that you are here: it is past, it is untrue." And part of her did not feel thus.
If she had had any intention of referring to the subject she had not, in the event, much chance of doing so. It was to be a day of shocks. Armand was standing with his back to her, looking out of the window giving on to the courtyard; evidently he had been watching her arrival. He turned at her entrance, came forward and kissed her hand, her cheek, and then said gravely, "Horatia, I am sorry to have to scold you."
"What is it?" she asked, genuinely amazed.
"You went yesterday to the English Embassy."
"O, that!" she exclaimed, moved by the ludicrous disparity between this enormity and what she had been hearing of him. And she began to walk across the room, pulling off her gloves.