De Meneval was so overcome that he could do nothing but pat her head and cry:
“Oh, what have you not made me suffer to-night!”
“At least,” replied Léontine, laughing and looking toward Major Fallière, “you have not spent your usual dull evening at Melun,” and de Meneval had the grace to blush, while old P. M. P. laughed back at the roguish Léontine.
Papa Bouchard, too, had suffered agonies at Léontine’s behavior—agonies, however, which the attentions he experienced at the hands of the young ladies partly ameliorated, for they had not stopped pinching and tickling him for a single moment.
“Really,” he said, “I have been very much agitated and distressed—I never saw such doings in the Rue Clarisse. I was very seriously concerned at my ward’s behavior—very seriously concerned. But now,” continued Papa Bouchard, “everything seems to be straightened out to everybody’s satisfaction, and finding ourselves accidentally together, why not finish up our evening with a jollity which—er—did not—er—exist, so far as I am concerned, in the beginning? So I say—houp-là!”
Alas! at that very moment the door opened softly behind him and in walked Madame Vernet! She was prettier, more demure and gentle than ever before. Her black costume, though highly coquettish, had a nun-like propriety about it. She advanced with downcast eyes, and said, timidly:
“I knocked and thought I heard someone say, ‘Come in.’ I do not know on whose hospitality I am trespassing, but I saw Monsieur Bouchard enter half an hour ago, and as I must see him on a matter of business, I venture to ask for a word with him here.”
Monsieur Bouchard, at the sight of her, seemed about to collapse. Not so Captain de Meneval. He rose at and said, with an ironical bow:
“Madame Vernet, you are trespassing on the hospitality of Captain de Meneval, the gentleman you adopted as a brother about ten days ago and handed over as a dangerous lunatic to Dr. Delcasse—who had a strait-jacket, a cold douche and a padded cell ready for him.”
At this Madame Vernet assumed an attitude more shrinking, more timid than before, and falling on Monsieur Bouchard’s shoulder, cried: