“I’ll wager you don’t remember the date of my wedding, Mamma,” said Isabelle, now Madame Landeau.
“Oh, you dreadful Isabelle! You’re always ready with a jest,” said her mother.
And, with diplomacy which lacked subtlety, the Italian countess bent over her pug and covered him with caresses.
Seeing all her guests busy, Madame Dulaurens threw a hasty glance at the clock and saw that it was a quarter to eight. Dinner was ordered for seven, and in the provinces punctuality is strictly observed.
“My dear little countess, did you see anything of Clément this afternoon?” she asked her daughter, who sat silent and absent-minded.
“No, Mamma,” answered Alice, in a low voice.
Four or five months after Marcel Guibert’s departure, the despairing Alice, crushed and submissive, had married, at her clever mother’s bidding, Count Armand de Marthenay, then Lieutenant of the 4th Dragoons at Chambéry. For the third time they were celebrating her “happiness.” Her maidenly languor and supple slenderness had changed to depression and leanness. Her limpid eyes and the drooping corners of her mouth told of profound and habitual sorrow. Without losing their refinement her features had altered. Through a greater prominence of the cheek-bones, a more pronounced thinness of the nose, a fading of color in the cheeks, the old expression of youth and innocence had given place to a sad little air of fragile resignation. She bore the marks of a sorrow which filled her life and of which her husband was certainly quite aware. To be convinced of this, it was sufficient to look at the heavy, pimply visage behind her—the vacant face of a man prematurely worn out.
The house at Chambéry where the Dulaurenses lived in the winter reminded one in its massive structure and the pillars of its staircase of the showy palaces in Genoa the Magnificent. The drawing-room looked on to the Place Saint-Léger in the centre of the town. Ten lamps lighted up the vast room that evening, but were not sufficient to show off the fine old high-timbered ceiling.
Madame Dulaurens anxiously left her daughter, and drawing back the window-curtain looked out into the square, which she saw by the gas-jets flickering in the keen frosty air, was quite empty. She drew down the blind and looked at the party. They seem so interested in their talk that she decided to wait a few minutes longer.
“Madame Orlandi, who is always late, came too soon to-day,” she thought rather spitefully.