The Dowager was enthroned in an armchair on the left-hand side of the fireplace. She wore a quilted négligé of puce satin, very formless; but on her head, whose scanty grey hair had been scraped up in the latest—and most appalling—of fashions, à la Chinoise, towered two enormous yellow ostrich feathers. Where the dressing-gown fell away from her withered neck it revealed the fire of a perfect river of diamonds, and she was painted in a style to recall the old days of the Palais Royal; on her small hands were grey kid gloves. Some sort of a dame de compagnie, sitting on the other side of the hearth, rose, laid down the book in her hands, and melted away.
"Tiens, tiens!" then said in a high voice this human parrot (for as such she instantly struck Horatia). "So this is the English bride. Well, my dear, I am very glad to see you."
She held out her hand, and Horatia, rising from her reverence, supposed she ought to salute its kid covering, but the old lady, pulling her down, bestowed upon her a kiss. The tip of her large nose was exceedingly cold.
"Well, scapegrace," then observed Madame de la Roche-Guyon to her grandson, as he too kissed her, "what have you to say for yourself?"
"Only this," replied Armand smiling, and indicating Horatia.
"You probably get your penchant for red hair from your grandfather," remarked the Duchesse irrelevantly. "Sit down, ma fille; you must be tired." Her voice, though high, was, thought Horatia, the least disagreeable part of her. Armand pushed forward a chair, first removing from it a pack of cards, and Horatia sat down.
"And so you have been in solitary bliss, English fashion, at Kerfontaine?" said the old lady. "Quite alone, eh? No one for either of you to flirt with?"
"No one," responded Armand. "It is early days to begin that, grandmother."
"Ah, but there is always an old flame or two to mourn our marriage, is there not?" The malicious look which she shot at them with this remark might have been intended for either, but the very expressive frown which Armand bestowed on his jocular relative went unseen of Horatia, for he was standing behind her. It had, however, the effect of shaking a cackle of laughter out of the old lady.
"I am sure, my dear," she said, addressing herself to Horatia, "that you left a great many broken hearts behind you in England."