And Michelle, acutely sensitive to the brightness and splendor of Bess’s beauty, to her ravishing coloring and glorious physical perfections, said to herself with a bitterness, for which she could not account,—
“No wonder Mr. Egremont takes off his hat to that sumptuous creature. Pity some of her betters had not her beauty; we are but pale and bloodless shadows alongside of that brilliant comeliness.”
And as it always happens, Roger was called to account by both Bess and Michelle. Bess, with an armful of clean linen, meeting Roger that evening on the stairs, said tartly,—
“I saw to-day the young lady that you made hay with. She is not so handsome.”
Bess, observe, was speaking not to herself, but to Roger Egremont, of the woman she thought he favored.
Roger, with a poltroon’s readiness, answered,—
“I think she is not considered a great beauty, though very charming. She is not half so handsome as you. How come you on in French?”
“Pretty well,” replied Bess, seeing that Roger slid away from the subject of the Princess Michelle—whose name and quality she had found out promptly. “I know enough French now to make the impudent French devils behave themselves.” And she passed on to her work.
Roger went up to his attic congratulating himself that Michelle had not seen him with Bess in the forest that morning,—a purely accidental meeting, as he was on his way to do an errand for the King, though it might well have looked like an appointment. The first thing he saw on his rickety table was a note from Madame de Beaumanoir. She would be at home that evening. Would Mr. Egremont come? It was always a pleasure to see one of those devil-may-care Egremonts.
Roger immediately began dressing himself in his gray and silver suit, and afterward went to a barber in the town to shave him and give a curl to his long fair hair. The Princess Michelle did not wear powder; he had ever loathed it, and would scarcely have put a dust of it on his hair then for a thousand pounds, and swore frightfully at the innocent barber when he suggested it.