"There, my beauty," she said, making Renée sit down on a couch, "we shall be able to chat nicely. Do you know that you come in the very nick of time—I meant to go and see you this evening."
Renée, who knew the room, experienced that vague feeling of uneasiness, which a promenader feels on finding that a strip of forest has been cut down in a favourite landscape.
"Ah!" she said at last, "you have changed the position of the bed, haven't you?"
"Yes," quietly replied the lace-dealer, "one of my customers thought it would be much better in front of the mantelpiece. She also advised me to have red curtains."
"That's what I was thinking, the curtains used not to be of that colour. Red is a very common colour."
She put on her eye-glasses, and looked at this room which displayed the kind of luxury one finds in a large hotel. On the mantelshelf she saw some long hair-pins which certainly did not come from Madame Sidonie's meagre chignon. The paper of that part of the wall, against which the bed had formerly stood, was all torn, discoloured and dirtied by the mattresses. The agent had certainly tried to hide this sore with the backs of two arm chairs, but these backs were rather low, and Renée's glance remained fixed on this worn strip of paper.
"You have something to say to me?" she asked at last.
"Yes, it's quite a story," said Madame Sidonie, joining her hands and assuming the expression of a glutton who is about to relate what she has eaten at dinner. "Just fancy, Monsieur de Saffré is in love with the beautiful Madame Saccard. Yes, with yourself, my pretty one."
Renée did not vouchsafe even a gesture of coquetry.
"Indeed!" she remarked, "but you said he was so smitten with Madame Michelin."