Nothing was too much trouble to serve Madame, she was assured, and the young milliner fluttered away.
Horatia felt pleasantly languid, content to study the latest creations, and to look at those who were trying them on. Not far away a customer was viewing, with satisfaction, a béret of brilliant violet velvet, trimmed with acanthus green, and quite close to her, on her left, was a large gilt screen, behind which, to judge from the conversation which flowed over it, two ladies were trying on canezous, or blouses, and gossiping at the same time. Horatia heard that though some unnamed "she" passed for one of the best dressed women in Paris, the speaker, for her part, thought otherwise. The other lady laughed, and said, "Are you not prejudiced, ma chère, because she would not receive your cousin after his little affair—you know what I mean?"
The first lady was plainly roused at this. "It was abominable of her!" she exclaimed. "And poor Georges, he was terribly chagrined about it. Besides, what business has she to set herself up as so much better than her neighbours, when everybody knows that she is overfond of Florian?"
"I thought that was only gossip," said the other.
"Gossip! when she sees him nearly every day! Why, everybody knows it. It began this summer when they were down in the country. I know that for a fact; and now, if you doubt it, come and stay in my appartement and you will see him go into her house every day as regular as clockwork, at hours when she receives no one else. I will wager you he is there now."
"After all," remarked the second lady thoughtfully, "it would be rather natural, when he was, as report says, so near marrying her. And certainly it would be difficult to be hardhearted where he is concerned. But it does not fall in with what we heard of his fondness for his wife. Why, they were always about together at one time!"
"Like Armand and me!" thought Horatia with a rather bitter amusement. "What an offence it must have been! I wonder who is this too-attractive 'Florian.'" Here the milliner brought her a card of lace of the pattern required, but a little too wide, intimating, however, her willingness to go back and have another search for the narrower kind.
By the time that the girl had gone off again on her errand there were signs that the ladies on the other side of the screen were departing. "Yes, send me those two canezous, the pink and the white ... I don't think Herbault's cut is as good as it used to be ... Shall I drive you anywhere, Elise? You are leaving your reticule.—By the way, I forgot to tell you the cream of the business about Florian's poor wife, as you call her, the Englishwoman. She and Madame de Vigerie were bosom friends at one time—isn't it amusing?" They rustled away.
"Madame is ill!" said the young milliner anxiously. "Shall I get a glass of water—some eau-de-vie? If Madame would but sit down again!"
Horatia, as white as death, was standing up, supporting herself by the back of her chair. Seeing that she did not even appear to understand what was said to her, the girl hastily fetched an older assistant. Horatia's maid was also summoned from her errands in another part of the shop, but by the time she arrived her mistress appeared to have recovered herself, and was able, in a few minutes, to return to her carriage.