"Ah! the handsome Comte de Morangy is her partner."
"Do me the favor to tell me who else is likely to be?" rejoined another voice.
"They say he has lost his head over her," observed a third by-stander. "He has already used up three horses for her, and I don't know how many jockeys."
Self-esteem is so strange a counsellor, that, thanks to it, we all find ourselves in flat contradiction with ourselves a hundred times a day. In reality, Sir Lionel was delighted to know that Lady Lavinia was placed, by a new attachment, in a situation which assured their mutual independence. And yet, the publicity of the triumph which might help that discarded woman to forget the past was a species of affront which Lionel found it difficult to swallow.
Henry, who knew the neighborhood, guided him to the end of the village, to the house in which his cousin lived. There he left him.
This house stood a little apart from the other dwellings; the mountain rose behind it, and the front windows overlooked the ravine. A few feet away, a stream fell noisily into a cleft of the rock; and the house, bathed, so to speak, in that cool, wild noise, seemed to be shaken by the falling water and on the point of plunging with it into the abyss. It was one of the most picturesque locations imaginable, and Lionel recognized in the choice the romantic and slightly eccentric nature of Lady Lavinia.
An old negress opened the door of a small salon on the ground-floor. No sooner did the light fall on her glistening, weather-beaten face, than Lionel uttered an exclamation of surprise. It was Pepa, Lavinia's old nurse, whom Lionel had seen for two years in attendance upon his beloved. As he was not on his guard against any sort of emotion, the unexpected appearance of that old woman, arousing the memory of the past, upset all his ideas for a moment. He was very near leaping on her neck, calling her nurse, as in his youthful, merry days, and embracing her as an old friend and faithful servant; but Pepa stepped back, observing Lionel's eagerness with an air of stupefaction. She did not recognize him.
"Alas! am I so changed?" he thought.
"I am the person whom Lady Lavinia sent for," he said in a faltering voice. "Did she not tell you?"
"Yes, yes, my lord," replied the negress; "my lady is at the ball; she told me to bring her her fan as soon as a gentleman knocked at the door. Stay here; I will go to tell her."