I saw nothing except a gray felt hat, cocked over one ear, above a pair of broad shoulders, driving off in a cloud of dust.
ABANDONED
"I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as this. You have had some very strange ideas for the last two months. You take me to the sea side in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been married. You chose Fécamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to go into the country on the hottest day in the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify all your fancies. As for me, I am going back to have a nap."
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:
"Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?"
He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of by-gone years:
"I will go wherever you go," he replied.
"Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke," Monsieur de Cadour said; and he went back to the Hôtel des Bains, to lie down on his bed for an hour or two.
As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off, and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand: