Madame de la Rochaiguë, without appearing to notice the hunchback's preoccupation, continued, gaily:
"It is really very amusing to listen to all the rumours that are afloat concerning our ward's inheritance, as well as the large but singular legacies left by the countess."
"Indeed?"
"There is little or no foundation for these absurd reports," continued the baroness, in supercilious tones, for she had always disliked Madame de Beaumesnil. "The countess left a few trifling legacies to three or four old retainers, and small gratuities to her other servants. That is all the magnificent legacies, of which everybody is talking, amount to. But while the countess was in such a generous mood, she ought not to have been guilty of the ingratitude of forgetting a poor girl to whom she certainly owed some recognition of her services."
"To whom do you refer?" asked the marquis, concealing the pain he felt on hearing the baroness thus asperse Madame de Beaumesnil's memory. "Of what young girl are you speaking?"
"You have not heard, then, that, during the last days of her life, the countess, at the advice of her physician, summoned to her bedside a young and talented musician, who assisted not a little in assuaging the lady's sufferings?"
"It seems to me that I do recollect hearing this fact spoken of," answered the marquis.
"Well, does it not seem monstrous that the countess did not leave even a slight legacy to this poor girl? It may have been an oversight on her part, but, to me, it looks exceedingly like ingratitude."
The marquis knew Madame de Beaumesnil's kindness and nobility of heart so well that he, too, was struck by this apparent forgetfulness of the young artiste's claims.
After a moment of reflection, however, he vaguely felt that, inasmuch as such an oversight, if real, was inexplicable, there must have been something more than a mere failure of memory in the circumstance, so he said: