“Oh, Paul, dearest, protect your own Adèle from that dreadful old woman!”
Now, this was too much for any woman to stand. Mademoiselle Bouchard, panting and trembling with wrath and horror, sank into a chair.
“Élise,” she gasped, putting her hand before her eyes, “put up your umbrella between me and that disgraceful sight. I cannot look upon it.”
Élise, equally agitated, made futile attempts to convert the stick into an umbrella, and then cried out:
“Oh, this is only a stick! Perhaps I put the umbrella in the travelling bag.” But failing to find an umbrella in the flower pot, she collapsed into a chair next her mistress, crying out: “When you, Mademoiselle, have finished with Monsieur Bouchard I’ll dispose of Pierre. Oh, the rascal!”
Pierre, like his master, was dumb before the accuser. Not so Madame Vernet. She continued to appeal to Monsieur Bouchard:
“Oh, darling Paul, I am so frightened! Why don’t you send her away?”
“But I am not your ‘darling Paul’ and never was!”
Poor Monsieur Bouchard was simply a pitiable sight, and the de Menevals, the Major and three girls were heartless enough to go into convulsions of silent mirth at his predicament. They, too, had nothing to say in Mademoiselle Bouchard’s indignant presence. But that lady was determined to be answered.