The young man cast up his eyes to heaven. "Mademoiselle, by the very disposition of the chairs in an English drawing-room after dinner one can see it! In a row on one side of the room are the ladies; in a row on the other the gentlemen, perhaps looking at them indeed, but more likely talking among themselves of hunting or of politics. Now with us how different! It is to the ladies that the hour of the drawing-room is consecrated; we pay them court, we cannot help it, it is in the blood with us. Besides, have they not great influence on the situation of a man of the world? But with you, suppose now that M. le mari is at his club, eating a dinner that lasts for hours, and that then he goes to the ballet at the Opera, and afterwards perhaps to supper, all this time his unfortunate spouse must shut her doors to visitors, and, for all amusement, may take a cup of tea tête-à-tête with his armchair—vous savez, c'est du barbarisme!"
He was quite excited, and it did not occur to Horatia, amused and rather pleased, to wonder whether his indignation were on behalf of the excluded visitor or the secluded lady.
"You seem to know a great deal about it," she observed, smiling.
But M. de la Roche-Guyon here got up rather suddenly and said that he must be going. Horatia, could she have read his thoughts, might have reassured him, and told him that the sound he had heard was not the Rector opening the drawing-room window, with a view to sallying forth, but the garden gate, which was loose on the latch.
He had raised her hand in the graceful foreign fashion to his lips before she said, "But shall I not see you to-morrow?"
"To-morrow!" said he with enthusiasm. "Do you tell me that you, Mademoiselle, will be at the dinner-party of the Squire to which I am told I am bidden?"
"Yes," said Miss Grenville. "And I shall be interested to observe whether, after dinner, you follow the English fashion or the French."
"After what you have told me, is there need to ask?"
Horatia went into the house singing. Something shining and vital seemed to have brushed against her in passing to-day.
(2)