When they all assembled for the twelve o’clock dinner, Diane could scarcely be torn away from her book.
“You see,” she said to the assembled table, “I have got to learn how to behave like a marquise—and all in three weeks.”
“You behave like a marquise!” said Jean, somewhat rudely, and laughing. “You will be about as comfortable as a mackerel in a gravel walk! Excuse me, Diane.”
“Yes, I will excuse you,” said Diane, serenely. “You have been so good to me for so long, and now I have but eighteen more performances with you.”
Her lips trembled a little at this, but she quickly resumed:
“The book says that a girl must never see her fiancé alone, and a fiancé should not call oftener than twice a week. That I shall arrange, and Madame Grandin will stay with me.”
At this, even Jean laughed.
“How about your trousseau, my dear?” asked François, “especially your court costumes?”
“That will have to come later,” replied Diane. “I shall be so busy seeing the Marquis, and studying up this book, and trying to help you with the new girl that I sha’n’t have time to get a regular trousseau. Besides, I don’t want to spend as much as three hundred and four francs, which I have now, in a hurry. It is a great deal of money, and I must think over it and look well about before I spend it. I have my nice white muslin trimmed with lace at fifteen sous the yard, and I can wash and iron it so beautifully it will look like new. I shall be obliged to buy a wedding veil and wreath, but, by looking around a little, I think I can get one for five or six francs. How amusing it will be when I am a marquise thinking about these things!”
Grandin set on foot plans to secure a young lady in Diane’s place. In this, he was immediately rewarded, and succeeded in getting Mademoiselle Rose le Roi, as she called herself, a strapping young woman, blonde and beautiful, and as tall as Jean, and exactly the opposite of Diane in every respect. In this, lay a pain new and sharp for Diane. She had hoped that Mademoiselle le Roi would prove excessively stupid. On the contrary, the young woman turned out to be very bright.