“Hallo!” said De Vallagnosc, quite surprised, “you said Madame de Boves was unwell. But there she is standing over there near that counter, with Mademoiselle Blanche.”
The count could not help starting back, and casting a side glance at Madame Guibal.
“Dear me! so she is,” said he.
It was very warm in this room. The customers, half stifled, had pale faces with flaming eyes. It seemed as if all the seductions of the shop had converged into this supreme temptation, that it was the secluded alcove where the customers were doomed to fall, the corner of perdition where the strongest must succumb. Hands were plunged into the overflowing heaps, retaining an intoxicating trembling from the contact.
“I fancy those ladies are ruining you,” resumed De Vallagnosc, amused at the meeting.
Monsieur de Boves assumed the look of a husband perfectly sure of his wife's discretion, from the simple fact that he did not give her a sou to spend. The latter, after having wandered through all the departments with her daughter, without buying anything, had just stranded in the lace department in a rage of unsated desire. Half dead with fatigue, she was leaning up against the counter. She dived about in a heap of lace, her hands became soft, a warmth penetrated as far as her shoulders. Then suddenly, just as her daughter turned her head and the salesman went away, she was thinking of slipping a piece of point d'Alençon under her mantle. But she shuddered, and dropped it, on hearing De Vallagnosc's voice saying gaily:
“Ah! we've caught you, madame.”
For several seconds she stood there speechless and pale. Then she explained that, feeling much better, she thought she would take a stroll. And on noticing that her husband was with Madame Guibal, she quite recovered herself, and looked at them with such a dignified air that the other lady felt obliged to say:
“I was with Madame Desforges when these gentlemen met us.”
The other ladies came up just at that moment, accompanied by Mouret, who again detained them to point out Jouve the inspector, who was still following the woman in the family way and her lady friend. It was very curious, they could not form any idea of the number of thieves that were arrested in the lace department. Madame de Boves, who was listening, fancied herself between two gendarmes, with her forty-six years, her luxury, and her husband's fine position; but yet she felt no remorse, thinking she ought to have slipped the lace up her sleeve. Jouve, however, had just decided to lay hold of the woman in the family way, despairing of catching her in the act, but fully suspecting her of having filled her pockets, with a sleight of hand which had escaped him. But when he had taken her aside and searched her, he was wild to find nothing on her—not a cravat, not a button. Her friend had disappeared. All at once he understood: the woman in the family way was only there as a blind; it was the friend who did the trick.