“You can take them away with you when you go, Louise,” she said, indifferently. “M. le Député must have forgotten them. But it is a pity that they should be wasted.”
“But surely Madame will keep them?”
“I dislike the scent of roses,” was Madame’s quite curt reply.
But Rose—the Rose—she had made up her mind about that ornament of the theatre. There could never have been anything between her and Gaston, fastidious as he had been to his finger-tips. Mlle Dufour had not enough mind even to have amused him. But there was such a thing as claiming for lover a man who had on one occasion, or perhaps two, paid a woman some slight, half careless attention, especially when that man’s admiration was in itself a distinction. The Duchesse de Trélan had known it done in far higher circles than those in which Mlle Dufour moved. Something told her that in 1790 the actress had employed that useful method of self-advertisement, and who was there then—or ever—to gainsay its truth? To-day that man’s wife, having seen the claimant, felt with every instinct that the claim was false. But she did not detest Rose much the less.
(2)
Camain did not come again for several days. The little sprite which dwelt in Mme de Trélan’s brain, even in the cloud of sorrow and remorse, suggested that he was trying to find out and avoid a day when minor “colleagues” might come charging into her room. And luck served him, for he arrived one beautiful afternoon when she was quite alone. But he seemed in a very business-like mood, and while he apologised for interrupting her sewing, he told her the reason for his visit; he was thinking of having the garden put in better order, though, as he said, the ridiculous sum which the Directory placed at his disposal would not admit of much being done.
“But I know very little about gardens,” he concluded. “Now, a woman’s taste . . . Will you come out with me and give me the benefit of your advice, Madame Vidal?”
“But, Monsieur le Député,” objected Valentine, “I am not a Lenôtre. It is gardening on a grand scale here—landscape gardening. I suppose, however, that you could begin by putting the Italian garden in the front a little in order. Shall I come out there with you?”
M. Camain shook his head. “I should prefer to do something to the wilderness at the back—for a wilderness it is fast becoming. You would be doing Mirabel a real service if you would come out there with me now.”
Valentine had to acknowledge to herself that, assuming his sudden anxiety about the garden to be genuine, this was certainly true. And the state of the park had long afflicted her. Nevertheless she went unwillingly.