“Ah!” said she, “you are buying a travelling cloak.”
“Oh! dear, no,” replied Madame Desforges; “they are frightful.”
But Madame Marty had just noticed a striped cloak which she rather liked. Her daughter Valentine was already examining it. So Denise called Marguerite to clear the article out of the department, it being a model of the previous year, and the latter, at a glance from her comrade, presented it as an exceptional bargain. When she had sworn that they had lowered the price twice, that from a hundred and fifty francs, they had reduced it to a hundred and thirty, and that it was now at a hundred and ten, Madame Marty could not withstand the temptation of its cheapness. She bought it, and the salesman who accompanied her left the chair and the parcel, with the debit-notes attached to the goods.
Meanwhile, behind the ladies' backs, and amidst the jostlings of the sale, the gossip of the department about Madame Frédéric still went on.
“Really! she had some one?” asked a little saleswoman, fresh in the department.
“The bath-man of course!” replied Clara. “Mustn't trust those sly, quiet widows.”
Then while Marguerite was debiting, Madam Marty turned her head and desired Clara by a slight movement of the eyebrows, she whispered to Madame Desforges: “Monsieur Mouret's caprice, you know!”
The other, surprised, looked at Clara; then, turning her eyes towards Denise, replied: “But it isn't the tall one; the little one!”
And as Madame Marty could not be sure which, Madame Desforges resumed aloud, with the scorn of a lady for chambermaids: “Perhaps the tall one and the little one; all those who like!”
Denise had heard everything. She turned pale, and raised her big, pure eyes on this lady who was thus wounding her, and whom she did not know. No doubt it was the lady of whom they had spoken to her, the lady whom the governor saw outside. In the look that was exchanged between them, Denise displayed such a melancholy dignity, such a frank innocence, that Henriette felt quite awkward.