“An old friend, eh?”
After a moment, with a masked defiance still, and a hard laugh, she answered in English, though his question had been in French:
“De frien’ of an ol frien’.”
“You seem to be strangers now,” he suggested. She did not answer at all, but suddenly stopped dancing, saying: “I’m tired.”
The dance went on without them. Sophie and Farcinelle presently withdrew also. In five minutes the crowd had scattered, and the Lavilettes and Mr. Ferrol returned to the house.
Meanwhile, as they passed up the street, the droning, vibrating voice of the bear-leader came floating along the air and through the voices of the crowd like the thread of motive in the movement of an opera.
CHAPTER V
That night, while gaiety and feasting went on at the Lavilettes’, there was another sort of feasting under way at the house of Shangois, the notary.
On one side of a tiny fire in the chimney, over which hung a little black kettle, sat Shangois and Vanne Castine. Castine was blowing clouds of smoke from his pipe, and Shangois was pouring some tea leaves into a little tin pot, humming to himself snatches of an old song as he did so: