Two days later, toward seven o’clock, as Octave arrived at the Campardons’ for dinner, he found Rose by herself, dressed in a cream-color dressing-gown, trimmed with white lace.
“Are you expecting any one?” asked he.
“No,” replied she, rather confused. “We will have dinner directly Achille comes in.”
The architect was abandoning his punctual habits; was never there at the proper time for his meals, arrived very red in the face, with a wild expression, and cursing business. Then he went off again every evening, on all kinds of pretexts, talking of appointments at cafés, inventing distant meetings. Octave, on these occasions, would often keep Rose company till eleven o’clock, for he had understood that the husband had him there to board to amuse his wife, and she would gently complain, and tell him her fears: ah! she left Achille very free, only she was so anxious when he came home after midnight!
“Do you not think he has been rather sad lately?” asked she, in a tenderly frightened tone of voice.
The young man had not noticed it.
“I think he is rather worried, perhaps. The works at Saint-Roch cause him some anxiety.”
But she shook her head, without saying anything further about it. Then she was very kind to Octave, questioning him with a motherly and sisterly affection as to how he had employed the day. During nearly nine months that he had been boarding with them, she had always treated him thus as a child of the house.
At length the architect appeared.
“Good evening, my pet; good evening, my duck,” said he, kissing her with his doting air of a good husband. “Another fool has been detaining me in the street!”