"Madame Sauvresy, permit me to present to you Monsieur the Count de
Tremorel."
Bertha rose suddenly, blushing, confused, agitated by an indefinable emotion, as if she saw in reality an apparition. For the first time in her life she was abashed, and did not dare to raise her large, clear blue eyes.
"Monsieur," she stammered, "you are welcome."
She knew Tremorel's name well. Sauvresy had often mentioned it, and she had seen it often in the papers, and had heard it in the drawing-rooms of all her friends. He who bore it seemed to her, after what she had heard a great personage. He was, according to his reputation, a hero of another age, a social Don Quixote, a terribly fast man of the world. He was one of those men whose lives astonish common people, whom the well-to-do citizen thinks faithless and lawless, whose extravagant passions overleap the narrow bounds of social prejudice; a man who tyrannizes over others, whom all fear, who fights on the slightest provocation, who scatters gold with a prodigal hand, whose iron health resists the most terrible excesses. She had often in her miserable reveries tried to imagine what kind of man this Count de Tremorel was. She awarded him with such qualities as she desired for her fancied hero, with whom she could fly from her husband in search of new adventures. And now, of a sudden, he appeared before her.
"Give Hector your hand, dear," said Sauvresy. She held out her hand, which Tremorel lightly pressed, and his touch seemed to give her an electric shock.
Sauvresy threw himself into an arm-chair.
"You see, Bertha," said he, "our friend Hector is exhausted with the life he has been leading. He has been advised to rest, and has come to seek it here, with us."
"But, dear," responded Bertha, "aren't you afraid that the count will be bored a little here?"
"Why?"
"Valfeuillu is very quiet, and we are but dull country folks."