“Oh, yes!”
The Princess rose, walked around the table and stood beside the chair that held her portrait.
“My child, I respect your grief. My heart bleeds for you, but you are to be envied.” With uplifted eyebrows, and her head slightly to one side, she went on: “My husband, the Prince de Champvalliers is good. We adore one another. As a husband he is satisfactory,–better than most. But if, by chance, I should fall into a river, with death in its current, and he were safe and dry upon the bank–”
Sadly she smiled, and with a shrug of the shoulders turned about and moved away.
Erect, and with a jaunty step, she walked about the room, renewing acquaintance with old friends of her youth: with the little tapestried fables on the chairs and sofa; with certain portraits and smaller articles. But it was evident that the story she had heard still occupied her mind, for presently she came back to the table 205and stood in front of Elinor. With a slight movement of the head, as if to emphasize her words, she said, impressively, yet with the suggestion of a smile in her half-closed eyes:
“Were I in your place, my child, I should grieve and weep. Yes, I should grieve and weep; but I should enjoy my sorrow. You are still young. You take too much for granted. You are too young to realize the number of women in the world who would gladly exchange their living husbands for such a memory.” She raised her eyebrows, closed her eyes, and murmured, with a long, luxurious sigh: “The heroism! the splendid sacrifice! I tell you, Mademoiselle, no woman lives in vain who inspires in an earthly lover a devotion such as that!”
206XVI
NEWS FROM THE WORLD
Jacqes soon appeared. As his knowledge of English was scant, the Princess gave him the story she herself had heard. Great was his horror on learning that when last he came–in September–and left the usual provisions, the Duc de Fontrévault had been in his grave since the previous June.