“Your husband is very jealous?” Bernadine whispered, softly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Partly jealous, and partly, he has the most terrible distaste for acquaintances. He will not speak to strangers himself, or suffer me to do so. It is sometimes—oh! it is sometimes very triste.”
“Madame has my sympathy,” Bernadine assured her. “It is an impossible life—this. No husband should be so exacting.”
She looked at him with her round, blue eyes, a touch of added color in her cheeks.
“If one could but cure him!” she murmured.
“I would ask your permission to sit down,” Bernadine remarked, “but I fear to intrude. You are afraid, perhaps, that your husband may return.”
She shook her head.
“It will be better that you do not stay,” she declared. “For a moment or two he is engaged. He has an appointment in his room with a gentleman, but one never knows how long he may be.”
“You have friends in London, then,” Bernadine remarked, thoughtfully.