"Let us hope that Madame Legrand will receive her as she expects to be received," said Annot. "For my part I should have preferred to remain in St. Croix. Only yesterday Jeanne Tallot told us that she had no intention of going."
"She will see wonderful things," said the more simple and amiable. "It is possible that she may be invited to the Tuileries, and without doubt she will drive to the Bois de Boulogne in Madame Legrand's carriage, with servants in livery to attend her. My uncle's sister's son, who is a valet de place in a great family, tells us that the aristocracy drive up and down the Champs Éllysées every afternoon, and the sight is magnificent."
But Mère Giraud did not look forward to such splendors as these. "I shall see my Laure as a great lady," she said to herself. "I shall hold her white hands and kiss her cheeks."
The roar of vehicles, and the rush and crowd and bustle bewildered her; the brightness and the rolling wheels dazzled her old eyes, but she held herself bravely. People to whom she spoke smiled at her patois and her innocent questions, but she did not care.
She found a fiacre which took her to her destination; and when, after she had paid the driver, he left her, she entered the wide doors with a beating heart, the blood rising on her cheek, and glowing through the withered skin.
"Madame Legrand," she said a little proudly to the concierge, and the woman stared at her as she led her up the staircase. She was so eager that she scarcely saw the beauty around her,—the thick, soft carpets, the carved balustrades, the superb lamps. But when they stopped before a door she touched the concierge upon the arm.
"Do not say my name," she said. "I am her mother."
The woman stared at her more than ever.
"It is not my place to announce you," she said. "I only came up because I thought you would not find the way."
She could not have told why it was or how it happened, but when at last she was ushered into the salon a strange sense of oppression fell upon her. The room was long and lofty, and so shadowed by the heavy curtains falling across the windows that it was almost dark.