“You had better inquire of Mademoiselle Besançon,” replied the latter, in a peevish tone, at which the others laughed, “I would,” replied the questioner, “but I know not where to find her. Where is she? She’s not at her plantation. I was up there, and she had left two days before. She’s not with the aunt here. Where is she, Monsieur?”
I listened for the answer to this question with a degree of interest. I, too, was ignorant of the whereabouts of Eugénie, and had sought for her that day, but in vain. It was said she had come to the city, but no one could tell me anything of her. And I now remembered what she had said in her letter of “Sacré Coeur.” Perhaps, thought I, she has really gone to the convent. Poor Eugénie!
“Ay, where is she, Monsieur?” asked another of the party.
“Very strange!” said several at once. “Where can she be? Le Ber, you must know.”
“I know nothing of the movements of Mademoiselle Besançon,” answered the young man, with an air of chagrin and surprise, too, as if he was really ignorant upon the subject, as well as vexed by the remarks which his companions were making.
“There’s something mysterious in all this,” continued one of the number. “I should be astonished at it, if it were any one else than Eugénie Besançon.”
It is needless to say that this conversation interested me. Every word of it fell like a spark of fire upon my heart; and I could have strangled these fellows, one and all of them, as they stood. Little knew they that the “young Englishman” was near, listening to them, and as little the dire effect their words were producing.
It was not what they said of Eugénie that gave me pain. It was their free speech about Aurore. I have not repeated their ribald talk in relation to her—their jesting innuendoes, their base hypotheses, and coldly brutal sneers whenever her chastity was named.
One in particular, a certain Monsieur Sévigné, was more bizarre than any of his companions; and once or twice I was upon the point of turning upon him. It cost me an effort to restrain myself, but that effort was successful, and I stood unmoved. Perhaps I should not have been able to endure it much longer, but for the interposition of an event, which at once drove these gossips and their idle talk out of my mind. That event was the entrance of Aurore!
They had again commenced speaking of her—of her chastity—of her rare charms. They were dismissing the probabilities as to who would become possessed of her, and the certainty that she would be the maîtresse of whoever did; they were waxing warmer in their eulogium of her beauty, and beginning to lay wagers on the result of the sale, when all at once the clack of their conversation ceased, and two or three cried out—