“Magny, Mlle Magny,” said M. Chassin.
Valentine got up from the table and went over toward the stove. The past seemed suddenly to crowd upon her almost suffocatingly. Behind the other ghosts in Mirabel she often felt the gentle spirit of the mother-in-law who had welcomed her with such affection, and now here was another shadowy inmate. Then she was aware that the priest was watching her out of his placid, shrewd little eyes with a good deal of interest, and that she must walk warily.
“You knew Mlle Magny, I see?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said the Duchesse de Trélan. She remembered now her first sight of that prim, devoted attendant as it were yesterday. The best thing for him to suppose would be that they had been fellow-servants years ago. So she added, “I was here for the last two years of Mlle Magny’s service, when, as you say, she was maid to Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
“Were you here, then, Madame, under the Duchesse Valentine?” was the priest’s not unnatural question.
Mme de Trélan much disliked lying, although her whole life recently might have been called a lie. She clung to the literal truth underlying her statement when she said, “No, I never served the Duchesse Valentine.” And then, to turn him away from a dangerous topic, she said, “I need not ask you, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you are an insermenté priest. You must be, to hold the position which you do, and to have received any trust from so good a Catholic as Mlle Magny.”
“No, Madame, naturally I have never taken the oath,” responded M. Chassin. He looked at her with fresh interest, and added, “You too, then, my daughter, are a good Catholic in these times of persecution?”
“I was never a Catholic worth speaking of, I am afraid,” said Valentine rather sadly, “until these times.”
“And are you able to go to your duties here, my child?” It was remarkable how the cloak of the plotter and half humorous observer slipped at once aside, and revealed the priest.
“Not here,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I always did in Paris; it is possible there. But there is no Mass here, no priest . . . O mon père!”