Marquis de Praille raised his fashionable lorgnette, contemplating a vast chateau-like confection on the table, and sprung his little joke.
“Why don’t they eat cake?” he replied airily, with a cackling laugh.
De Vaudrey smiled fleetingly, then half-serious, half-smiling, raised a hand in polite protest. Two fair ones carried him off eagerly to retail to the distinguished visitor a morsel of gossip.
“The Marquis has made another conquest!” whispered one to him behind her fan, to which the other added: “Yes, he found a marvelously beautiful Norman peasant journeying to Paris in a stage coach, so he had La Fleur take her and fetch her here––a mere rustic, to outvie us all!”
“Yes, ’twill be good sport,” replied the cynic. “These country girls that his excellency abducts are willing victims.”
They were interrupted by a procession of servants bringing in the covered pallet.
The spread was thrown off, a restorative administered to the recumbent figure––Henriette sat up and gazed in blank stupefaction at the crowding revelers.
She staggered to her feet, looking for a friendly face somewhere.
Of a sudden, the mental image of her lost sister shot her as with a violent agony.