"You!" he cried, stepping back. "You here, Suzanne!"
A most attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse. Her fair hair was divided into two loose waves, whose rebellious curls played about at random. She had grey, almond-shaped eyes, half-veiled by their dark lashes; and her tiny teeth laughed at the edge of her red lips, lips so red that one would have thought—and been quite wrong in thinking—that they were painted.
It was Suzanne Jorancé, the daughter of Jorancé the special commissary and a friend of Marthe, who knew her when she was quite a child at Lunéville. Suzanne had spent four months, last winter, in Paris with the Philippe Morestals.
"You!" he repeated. "You, Suzanne!"
She replied, gaily:
"Myself. Your father came to call on us at Saint-Élophe. And, as mine was out for a walk, he brought me back with him. I have just got out of the carriage. And here I am."
He seized her by the wrists, in a fit of anger, and, in a hollow voice:
"You had no business to be at Saint-Élophe. You wrote to Marthe that you were going away this morning. You ought not to have stayed. You know quite well that you ought not to have stayed."
"Why?" she asked, quite confused.
"Why? Because, at the end of your visit to Paris, you spoke to me in words which I was entitled to interpret ... which I took to mean ... And I would not have come, if you had not written that you were...."