“Ah, but I know it as a fact!”
The voices were lost in the hum of the others. Cecile just caught a sound like Quaerts’ name. Then Suzette asked, suddenly:
“Do you know young Mrs. Hijdrecht, Auntie?”
“No.”
“Over there, with the diamonds. You know, they talk about her and Quaerts. Mamma doesn’t believe it. At any rate, he’s a great flirt. You sat next to him, didn’t you?”
Cecile suffered severely in her innermost sensitiveness. She shrank into herself entirely, doing all that she could to appear different from what she was. Suzette saw nothing of her discomfiture.
The men returned. Cecile looked to see whether Quaerts would speak to Mrs. Hijdrecht. But he wholly ignored her presence and even, when he saw Suzette sitting with Cecile, came over to them to pay a compliment to Suzette, to whom he had not yet spoken.
It was a relief to Cecile when she was able to go. She was yearning to be alone, to recover herself, to return from her abstraction. In her brougham she scarcely dared breathe, fearful of something, she could not say what. When she reached home she felt a stifling heaviness which seemed to paralyse her; and she dragged herself languidly up the stairs to her dressing-room.
And yet, on the stairs, there fell over her, as from the roof of her house, a haze of protecting safety. Slowly she went up, her hand, holding a long glove, pressing the velvet banister of the stairway. She felt as if she were about to swoon:
“But, Heaven help me ... I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!” she whispered between her trembling lips, in sudden amazement.