“I wonder what he is saying?” Madame de Castro was once betrayed into exclaiming.
“Something metaphysical, about a poem, or a passage of music, or a picture,—or perhaps his soul,” returned M. Renard. “His soul is his strong point,—he pets it and wonders at it. He puts it through its paces. And yet, singularly enough, he is never ridiculous—only fanciful and naïve. It is his soul which so fascinates women.”
Whether this last was true of other women or not, Madame Villefort scarcely appeared fascinated. As she listened, her eyes still rested upon his eager mobile face, but with a peculiar expression,—an expression of critical attention, and yet one which somehow detracted from her look of youth, as if she weighed his words as they fell from his lips and classified them, without any touch of the enthusiasm which stirred within himself.
Suddenly she rose from her seat ana addressed her husband, who immediately rose also. Then she spoke to M. Edmondstone, and without more ado, the three left the box,—the young beauty, a little oddly, rather followed than accompanied by her companions,—at the recognition of which circumstance Madame de Castro uttered a series of sharp ejaculations of disapproval.
“Bah! Bah!” she cried. “She is too young for such airs!—as if she were Madame l’Impératrice herself! Take me to my carriage. I am tired also.”
Crossing the pavement with M. Renard, they passed the carriage of the Villeforts. Before its open door stood M. Villefort and Edmondstone, and the younger man, with bared head, bent forward speaking to his cousin.
“If I come to-morrow,” he was saying, “you will be at home, Bertha?”
“Yes.”
“Then, good-night,”—holding out his hand,—“only I wish so that you would go to the Aylmers instead of home. That protégée of Mrs. Aylmer’s—the little singing girl—would touch your heart with her voice. On hearing her, one thinks at once of some shy wild bird high in a clear sky,—far enough above earth to have forgotten to be timid.”
“Yes,” came quietly from the darkness within the carriage; “but I am too tired to care about voices just now. Good-night, Ralph!”