The two women dropped upon a bench from a sense of exhaustion. No creature of her sex was ever played upon like an instrument with more Machiavellian penetration than the marquise throughout this week.
“Yes, you are happy, but I!” she said,—“to know of Conti’s infidelities, and have to bear them!”
“Why not leave him?” said Camille, seeing the hour had come to strike a decisive blow.
“Can I?”
“Oh! poor boy!”
Both were gazing into a clump of trees with a stupefied air.
Camille rose.
“I will go and hasten breakfast; my walk has given me an appetite,” she said.
“Our conversation has taken away mine,” remarked Beatrix.
The marquise in her morning dress was outlined in white against the dark greens of the foliage. Calyste, who had slipped through the salon into the garden, took a path, along which he sauntered as though he were meeting her by accident. Beatrix could not restrain a quiver as he approached her.