“Oh, it’s you!” said Juliette, as she perceived her. “I didn’t catch who it was!”
The look of annoyance did not fade from her face, however, and it was evident that the visit was ill-timed.
“Do I disturb you?” asked Hélène.
“Not at all, not at all,” answered the other. “You’ll understand in a moment. We have been getting up a surprise. We are rehearsing Caprice[*] to play it on one of my Wednesdays. We had selected this morning for rehearsal, thinking nobody would know of it. But you’ll stay now? You will have to keep silence about it, that’s all.”
[*] One of Alfred de Musset’s plays.
Then, clapping her hands and addressing herself to Madame Berthier, who was standing in the middle of the drawing-room, she began once more, without paying any further attention to Hélène: “Come, come; we must get on. You don’t give sufficient point to the sentence ‘To make a purse unknown to one’s husband would in the eyes of most people seem rather more than romantic.’ Say that again.”
Intensely surprised at finding her engaged in this way, Hélène had sat down. The chairs and tables had been pushed against the wall, the carpet thus being left clear. Madame Berthier, a delicate blonde, repeated her soliloquy, with her eyes fixed on the ceiling in her effort to recall the words; while plump Madame de Guiraud, a beautiful brunette, who had assumed the character of Madame de Lery, reclined in an arm-chair awaiting her cue. The ladies, in their unpretentious morning gowns, had doffed neither bonnets nor gloves. Seated in front of them, her hair in disorder and a volume of Musset in her hand, was Juliette, in a dressing-gown of white cashmere. Her face wore the serious expression of a stage-manager tutoring his actors as to the tones they should speak in and the by-play they should introduce. The day being dull, the small curtains of embroidered tulle had been pulled aside and swung across the knobs of the window-fastenings, so that the garden could be seen, dark and damp.
“You don’t display sufficient emotion,” declared Juliette. “Put a little more meaning into it. Every word ought to tell. Begin again: ‘I’m going to finish your toilette, my dear little purse.’”
“I shall be an awful failure,” said Madame Berthier languidly. “Why don’t you play the part instead of me? You would make a delicious Mathilda.”
“I! Oh, no! In the first place, one needs to be fair. Besides, I’m a very good teacher, but a bad pupil. But let us get on—let us get on!”