Marie Josephine stopped her brother’s words with a stamp of her foot. “You are not to say that, Lisle!” she exclaimed passionately.
“Don’t tease her, my cousin. How can you do it?” reproved Hortense, rising as she spoke and going over to the fireplace. She laid both hands on the carved, gilded mantelpiece and stood looking down at the dancing swirl of blue and gold. Suddenly she put her face in her hands.
Marie Josephine went up to her and touched her arm, forgetting her own trouble for the moment. “What is it, Hortense? Why are you sad?” she asked.
Hortense raised her face and smiled. “I’m not sad, chérie; not this afternoon. It is only that now everything seems grey and dreadful, and Tante is unhappy because so many of her friends have gone away, and because of everything.”
“You’ll have the party,” Marie Josephine answered bitterly.
Her cousin put her arm about her for a moment and gave her a little hug. “You want to go so badly. I do wish you could; but even if Madame de Soigné had asked you, Tante would never have allowed you to go. Twelve and a half doesn’t sound much younger than fourteen and a half, but it is, you know,” she said.
“I’m always treated like a baby,” Marie Josephine replied. There was a good deal of truth in her words. She was small and quiet and shy. She would not be thirteen until November and that was three months away.
Lisle came up to the fire, stepping over Flambeau, who had settled himself in the heat of the blaze, and pinched Marie Josephine’s ear.
Proté came up to him with a collar of fluted gold tinsel and ermine. “Will you allow me to see if it fits properly, Monsieur Lisle?” she asked, putting her funny, plump face on one side as she examined her handiwork.
“No, I’ll not be bothered with frills to-day.” Lisle frowned this time in earnest, rubbing his shoulders restlessly against the side of the mantel and looking out of the window where dark trees tossed against a grey, stormy sky.