“But he doesn’t. However, I have given him Pierre. I have the greatest confidence in Pierre. In thirty years I have never known him to be guilty of an indiscretion. He was very unwilling to go, poor fellow. He is truly attached to the quiet and decorum of the Rue Clarisse, and objected very much to the noise and bustle of the Rue Bassano, with so many theatres about and people turning night into day. I almost had to force him to go—but I did it on my poor, dear brother’s account. Pierre is to come to see me every day to tell me just how the dear boy has passed his time.”
Léontine sincerely hoped that Pierre would not think it necessary to mention her visit to Papa Bouchard the night before.
“And I have had another sorrow,” continued poor Mademoiselle Bouchard. “My parrot—Pierrot—that I have had for seventeen years, and taught so many moral and useful aphorisms—he, too, has deserted me.”
“All three of them vanished—like this—pouf!” Élise put in, with the freedom of an old servant. “Monsieur Bouchard, that good-for-nothing husband of mine and Pierrot—and all bent on mischief—that I’ll swear to!”
Mademoiselle Bouchard proceeded to read Élise a lecture on the duties of the married state, among the first of which was the obligation of the wife to believe everything her husband tells her, at which Élise laughed grimly.
“Mademoiselle is joking, ha, ha!”
Although Mademoiselle Bouchard led so retired a life, she liked well enough to know what was going on in the outside world, if only to be shocked at it. So, when Léontine told her about the proposed supper at the Pigeon House that evening, Mademoiselle Bouchard was duly horrified, terrified and mortified, but she did not forget to charge Léontine to come and tell her all the dreadful things she saw at that unconventional place.
Léontine, after spending the morning in the Rue Clarisse, returned to her own apartment in the Avenue de l’Impératrice. She was so dispirited at the contemplation of her own faults and Victor’s supposed Spartan virtue that she had no heart to take her usual afternoon automobile excursion in the Bois de Boulogne—the automobile being one of the few indulgences she had been able to screw out of Papa Bouchard. She remained at home, therefore, until it was time to take the eight o’clock train for Melun. Then, taking her maid to the St. Lazare station, and directing her to be there when the eleven o’clock train from Melun returned, Léontine stepped into a first-class compartment, and was soon speeding toward Melun.
She wore a beautiful evening costume concealed by a long silk cloak, and a charming hat was perched on her dainty head. The thought in her tender little heart was of the pleasure her society would give her dear Victor.
But her dear Victor had spent the day in a manner not unlike her own. He had interviewed the proprietor of the Pigeon House and had paid half the bill. The transaction had involved the mortifying admission that before the balance was handed over Monsieur Bouchard would be out there himself to look into the matter, as if Captain de Meneval were a naughty schoolboy. The proprietor of the Pigeon House had scoffed heartlessly at this, and de Meneval had difficulty in keeping from knocking him down for his impudence. Then—Léontine’s visit! What impish microbe had lodged in her head, inducing her to come out there? He knew her to be keen of wit, and it would be difficult to disguise from her his familiarity with the place. He might, it is true, say he knew little or nothing about it, but the waiters, especially one François, who knew his taste in wines and cigars, fish and entrées and hors d’œuvres to a dot, would be sure to betray him. And then, the diamond necklace lay heavy on his heart and danced up and down before his eyes, for Victor de Meneval really loved his charming young wife, and argued to himself that if that stingy old hunks of a Papa Bouchard had not held him so tight the present predicament would not have existed.