"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden brightness, "you don't need a mask and costume to resemble your great-grandmother, the casket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part, that with the one embroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and the three others who had declined to take lessons, they could easily pay the rent--and how kind it was of Monsieur, the aged father of that one embroidery scholar, to procure those invitations to the ball! The dear old man! He said he must see one more ball before he should die.
Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that her daughter was content to admire her silently.
"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you remember the evening you treated me so ill?"
The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.
"I did not treat you ill."
"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my purse?"
"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the andiron; her eyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse blame yourself. For the way you found it again--which was far worse--thank Palmyre. If you had not asked her to find it and shared the gold with her we could have returned with it to 'Sieur Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let him see us. I do not doubt he filled the purse."
"He? He never knew it was empty. It was Nobody who filled it. Palmyre says that Papa Lébat--"
"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superstitious mention.
The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing the unendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the cloud hung over but a moment.