Compare that family gathering at my aunt Van Cloth's with those unhealthy stolen pleasures of debauched husbands who feel ashamed and tremble with the fear of being surprised. My uncle is a patriarch and takes no part in the licentiousness of our times. So much for this subject.
I have just received a most unforeseen blow, my dear Louis, and even while I write have scarcely recovered from the alarm of a horrible machination from which we were only saved by a miracle.
I told you about my poor Kondjé-Gul's passing grief on account of her mother's foolish ideas. Reassured as to the future by my vows and promises, she was too amenable to my influence to refuse to submit to a trial which I was forced by duty to prepare her for. Proud at the thought that she was sacrificing her jealousy for me, sacrificing herself for my happiness, her tears having been dried up by my kisses, I found her the day after this cruel blow to her heart as expansive and confiding as if no cloud had darkened our sky.
But a very few days after I was quite surprised to observe a sort of melancholy resignation about her. I attributed this trouble to some of the childish worries which her mother's temper occasionally gave her. However, after several days had passed like this, I came to the conclusion that the cause of her sadness must be something more than a transitory one, and that she was harassed by some new grief which even my presence was not sufficient to dissipate. By her replies to me, which seemed to be pervaded by more than usual tenderness, I judged that—in her fear of alarming me, no doubt,—she wished to conceal from me the real cause of her anxiety.
One evening at one of our little parties at the Montagues, which had begun as a concert, but was converted by us, in our gay and sociable mood, into a dance, Maud had trotted me off to make up a quadrille. Kondjé-Gul, who, as you know, never dances, had withdrawn into the boudoir adjoining the drawing-room, where she was looking through the albums. I suspected nothing, and was engaged in a frivolous conversation with Maud, when from where I stood, through the glass partition which separated the two rooms, I noticed Kiusko come and sit down by her side. It was natural enough that, seeing her alone, he considered himself bound not to leave her so, for that might have looked like a want of politeness on his part. It seemed to me, moreover, from their faces, that their conversation was upon indifferent topics, and was being conducted in that tone of ordinary friendliness which was usual between them.
He was turning over the pages of an album as he talked to her. I had no reason to pay much attention to this tête-à-tête, and was not even intending to follow it, but once, near the end of the quadrille, my eyes being again turned by chance in Kondjé-Gul's direction, I saw her rise up all of a sudden, as if something that Daniel had said had excited her suddenly. I thought I saw her blush, raising her head proudly and answering him in an offended tone.
The dance being now over, I left Maud, and, agitated by an anxious kind of feeling, walked up to the boudoir. They were standing up, and Kiusko's back being turned to the door, he did not see me enter. Kondjé-Gul saw me and said:
"André, come and give me your arm!"
At this unusually bold request, Daniel could not repress a gesture of astonishment, and cast a bewildered glance at me. I advanced, and she seized my arm with a convulsive movement, and addressed herself to my rival: