The young man fancied he felt a slight quiver in her frame, so erect and so calm.
“Not at all,” said he. “They mixed me up in the matter, which annoys me immensely. The poor devil swallowed everything.”
“It is very wrong,” declared she, in her grave voice.
No doubt Octave was mistaken. When he withdrew his arm from her waist, Madame Hédouin was not even panting, her eyes were clear, and her hair not the least disarranged. But a scandal upset the end of the ball. Uncle Bachelard, who had finished himself off at the refreshment bar, ventured on a lively idea. He had suddenly been seen dancing, a most indecent step before Gueulin. Some napkins rolled round and stuffed in front of his buttoned-up coat, gave him the bosom of a wet-nurse, and two big oranges placed on the napkins, behind the lapels, displayed their roundness, in the sanguineous redness of an excoriated skin. This time every one protested: though one may earn heaps of money, yet there are limits which a man who respects himself should never go beyond, especially before young persons. Monsieur Josserand, ashamed and in despair, drew his brother-in-law away. Duveyrier displayed the greatest disgust.
At four o’clock the newly married couple returned to the Rue de Choiseul. They brought Théophile and Valérie back in their carriage. As they went up to the second floor, where an apartment had been prepared for them, they came across Octave, who was also retiring to rest. The young man wished to draw politely on one side, but Berthe made a similar movement, and they knocked up against each other.
“Oh! excuse me, mademoiselle,” said he.
The word “mademoiselle” amused them immensely. She looked at him, and he recalled the first glance exchanged between them on that same staircase, a glance of gayety and daring, the charming welcome of which he again beheld. They understood each other perhaps; she blushed, whilst he went up alone to his room, in the midst of the death-like peacefulness of the upper floors.
Auguste, with his left eye closed up, half mad with the headache which had been clinging to him since the morning, was already in the apartment, where the other members of the family were arriving. Then, at the moment of quitting Berthe, Valérie yielded to a sudden fit of emotion, and pressing her in her arms, and completing the rumpling of her white dress, she kissed her, saying, in a low voice:
“Ah! my dear, I wish you better luck than I have had!”