Gerard, ashamed and awkward, hurriedly pushed forward an arm-chair.
“Ah, but sit you down also,” she expostulated. “Only the disagreeable says itself standing.” Then, as he obeyed, she looked at him with an ogle. “What a handsome man you are!” she said. The words frightened Gerard excessively but unnecessarily; it was only part of Mademoiselle Papotier’s philosophy that you could put every man on earth into a good-humor by broadly praising his looks. If Red Riding-hood had said to the wolf “What fine teeth you have!” instead of “What big ones!” he would probably have abandoned his intention of eating her.
“No wonder the poor thing loved you,” immediately added the little governess, casting down her eyes. She was hung round with black jet indiscriminately, and she picked at it—now here, now there.
Gerard, as we know, was not a diplomatist. “Did she ask you to come and tell me that?” he cried, with irritable irony.
“Ah, Monsieur van Helmont,” replied the Frenchwoman, softly, and her swarthy face seemed to lose its vigor, “it is always like that; you men, you knock at a woman’s heart until it opens, and then you cry out in scorn at the open door!” She hesitated for a moment, still plucking at the jet. “First the beautiful Ursula,” she said, “and then my own sweet Helena. Aye, Monsieur, it is not right!”
“Ursula?” cried Gerard, in amazement.
“Yes, do you think no one knows? Oh, that is like you men again. You can always trust the woman you have wronged to keep your secret. You are safe. Not a word has the noble Helena spoken; but trust Papotier to see for herself.”
“It is not true,” said Gerard, with real fervor. “I have never wronged a hair of Ursula’s head.”
Mademoiselle Papotier blushed, actually blushed. “The word ‘wrongs,’” she said, “is not easily defined; it has a masculine and a feminine gender. Ah, there you behold the former governess! One thing, however, I can tell you, Monsieur van Helmont, it is Mademoiselle Ursula and her wrongs that have lost you your bride. I repeat, Helena has told me nothing; but Mademoiselle Rovers, and she alone, has broken off your engagement.” Then she went on to tell her astounded listener about the interview on the garden seat which she had watched from her staircase window.