“Oh, really?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “It was in England I saw these, or somewhere else; not in Paris. I think it must have been in the Pyrenees, many years ago. I am told your ladies are very pretty. One of these ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion! She presented me a note of introduction from someone—I forgot whom—and she sent with it a note of her own. I kept her letter a long time afterwards, it was so strangely expressed. I used to know some of the phrases by heart. But I have forgotten them now, it is so many years ago. Since then I have seen no more Americans. I think my daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she sees everyone.”
At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a singular way, at once ugly and pretty; she had protuberant eyes, and lips strangely red. She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle Nioche; this was what that much-obstructed young lady would have liked to be. Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance, hopping about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
“You ought to show more of your shoulders behind,” he said very gravely. “You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as that.”
The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece, and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin’s assertion. The mirror descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh surface. The young marquise put her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress. “Like that, you mean?” she asked.
“That is a little better,” said Bellegarde in the same tone, “but it leaves a good deal to be desired.”
“Oh, I never go to extremes,” said his sister-in-law. And then, turning to Madame de Bellegarde, “What were you calling me just now, madame?”
“I called you a gad-about,” said the old lady. “But I might call you something else, too.”
“A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?”
“A very beautiful person,” Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was in French.
“That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,” said the young marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, “Do you dance?”