“You have, no doubt, been working hard,” said the old lady. “You are altered. We are the cause of your seclusion. That portrait had delayed some pictures essential to your reputation.”
Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his rudeness.
“Yes,” he said, “I have been very busy, but I have been suffering——”
At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her lover, and her anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach.
“You must have thought us quite indifferent to any good or ill that may befall you?” said the old lady.
“I was wrong,” he replied. “Still, there are forms of pain which we know not how to confide to any one, even to a friendship of older date than that with which you honor me.”
“The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be measured by time. I have seen old friends who had not a tear to bestow on misfortune,” said the Baroness, nodding sadly.
“But you—what ails you?” the young man asked Adelaide.
“Oh, nothing,” replied the Baroness. “Adelaide has sat up late for some nights to finish some little piece of woman’s work, and would not listen to me when I told her that a day more or less did not matter——”
Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these two noble, calm faces, he blushed for his suspicions, and ascribed the loss of his purse to some unknown accident.