"That is because she cannot succeed in buying any like it, I expect," retorted her husband. "Is that why you were crying, my child? Listen then, and I will tell you a secret. The Duchesse is having a wig made as nearly as possible the colour of your hair; she is going to wear it on her fête or on the next saint's day. There's a compliment for you! Do not mind, therefore, what my cousin says. All women are jealous of one another.... Come now, take away that handkerchief and let me kiss you!"
She let him do so, and even clung to him. "Promise me, promise me, that you will always love me, Armand!"
"The good old phrase again!" whispered a little imp in the young man's ear. "Foolish, foolish child," he said, smiling his delightful smile. "What do you think I am made of then?"
"You do really forgive me for yesterday?" she murmured, hiding her tear-stained face in his breast. "It must never happen again. I could not bear that anything should come between us.... As long as you are with me, Armand, nothing can."
"My darling," he said, and kissed the top of her head.
"I am very, very sorry about Lady Granville," she went on after a moment, and with a heavy sigh. "Is the Duchesse exceedingly angry with me?"
"Perhaps the slaughter she made of me yesterday will content her," suggested her husband cheerfully.
Horatia clasped him closer, "O poor Armand! I will never, never see Lady Granville again! I will write to her to-day and say so."
When, a few minutes later, Armand had gone, after assuring her again that he would love her as long as the Seine ran through Paris, that she was probably the one woman in the world who could look beautiful after tears, and that he had found the bal de l'Opéra last night very dull because he could not hope to come on a lock of her hair peeping out from the hood of a domino, Horatia slipped out of bed and went to her mirror. Was she beautiful, pale and heavy-eyed as she was? She propped her face on her hands, her hair falling about her shoulders in a cloud of sunset, and stared into the glass. As long as the Seine ran through Paris! Would he love her just as much when her colour was not as clear and fresh as now it was, when there were lines on her white forehead, when her bright hair began to lose its lustre ... when, in short, she was no longer young, and, as he called her now, beautiful? Would he?
And would he love her just as much ... or more ... if, if—