And as if he considered himself released from the necessity of paying any further attention to the orphan by this commonplace remark, he bowed again, and then took a seat beside the baroness, while her husband tried to conceal his ill-temper by sipping his coffee very slowly, and Helena took Ernestine a few steps aside, under pretext of calling her attention to the plants in a jardinière.
The marquis, without seeming to pay the slightest attention to Ernestine, never once lost sight of them. He had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, and he hoped to catch a few words of the conversation between the devotee and the orphan, while he chatted gaily with Madame de la Rochaiguë, both of them endeavouring to conceal their real thoughts under the airiest persiflage, and to try and discover what the other was driving at, in vulgar parlance.
The frivolous character of such a conversation favoured the hunchback's intentions, so, while he listened to Madame de la Rochaiguë with a distrait ear, he listened eagerly with the other to Ernestine, the baron, and Helena.
The devotee and her brother, believing the marquis absorbed in his conversation with Madame de la Rochaiguë, reminded the orphan, in the course of their conversation, of the promise she had made to accompany Helena to church the next morning at nine o'clock, and also to go with the baron a couple of days afterwards to view the wonders of the Luxembourg.
Though there was nothing extraordinary in these plans, M. de Maillefort's distrust of the Rochaiguë family was so great that he deemed it advisable to neglect no detail, however insignificant it might appear, so he noted these facts carefully, even while replying with his accustomed wit to Madame de la Rochaiguë's commonplaces.
The hunchback's attention had been divided in this way for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Helena make a whispered remark to Ernestine, accompanied by a glance at Madame de la Rochaiguë, as if to say that it was not worth while to interrupt her conversation, after which the orphan, Helena, and the baron left the room.
Madame de la Rochaiguë did not perceive their intention until the door closed behind them, but their departure suited her perfectly. The presence of other persons would prevent the explanation she considered it absolutely necessary to have with the marquis, for she was too shrewd and too well versed in the ways of the world not to have felt certain, as she had said to her husband, that the marquis, in thus renewing their acquaintance after a long interruption, had been actuated by a desire to meet the heiress, concerning whom, consequently, he must have some secret designs.
The hunchback's love for Madame de Beaumesnil having been suspected by no one, and his last interview with the dying countess being likewise a secret, Madame de la Rochaiguë did not and could not suspect the solicitude the marquis felt concerning Ernestine.
But wishing to ascertain the designs of the hunchback, so as to circumvent them if they interfered with her own, Madame de la Rochaiguë abruptly changed the subject as soon as the door had closed upon the orphan, by saying:
"Well, marquis, what do you think of Mlle. de Beaumesnil?"