[CHAPTER XIII]
They had now been a few days in Paris; and Elly, who was seeing Paris for the first time, was enchanted. The Louvre, the Cluny, the life in the streets and the cafés, the theatres in the evenings almost drove Aunt Thérèse from her mind.
"Oh, don't let's go to her!" said Lot, one morning, as they were walking along the boulevards. "Perhaps she doesn't even know who we are."
Elly felt a twinge of conscience:
"She wrote me a very nice letter on my engagement and she gave us a wedding-present. Yes, Lot, she knows quite well who we are."
"But she doesn't know that we're in Paris. Don't let's go to her. Aunt Thérèse: I haven't seen her for years, but I remember her long ago ... at the time of Mamma's last marriage. I was a boy of eighteen then. Aunt Thérèse must have been forty-eight. A handsome woman. She was even more like Grandmamma than Mamma is: she had all that greatness and grandness and majesty which you see in the earlier portraits of Grandmamma and which she still has when she sits enthroned in her chair.... It always impresses me.... Very slender and handsome and elegant ... calm and restful, distinguished-looking, with a delightful smile."
"The smile of La Gioconda...."
"The smile of La Gioconda," Lot repeated, laughing because of his wife, who was enjoying herself so in Paris. "But by the way, Elly ... the Venus of Milo: I couldn't tell you so when we were standing there, because you were in such silent rapture, but ... after I hadn't seen her for years, I found her such a disappointment. Only imagine ..."
"Well, what, Lot?"