"Oh, very long since," replied Aglaé, to whom both languages were nearly alike. "Our apartment is close by, sir--a small house in the Avenue d'Antin. The delight to find myself in my proper land again, where I can go about without one of those vilain bonnets and hear no street gamins hoot at me for it, is untellable."
"I understood that Colonel Cleeve and his family had gone to Egypt for the winter," observed Karl.
"To Egypt, or to some other place of barbarisme: so it was projected, sir. But my young lady, Miss Lucy, is not strong enough to be taken."
"What is the matter with her?" asked Karl, with assumed quietness.
"The matter? Oh! The matter is, that she has got no happiness left in her heart, sir," cried Aglaé, explosively, as if in deep resentment against things in general. "It's dried up. And if they don't mind, she will just go unwarningly out of life. That's my opinion: and, mind, sir, I do not go to say it without reason."
A slight blush mantled in Karl's face. He seemed to be watching a red paper kite, that was sailing beneath the blue sky.
"They see it now, both of them; the Colonel and Madame; they see that she's just slipping away from them, and they are ill. Ah but! the senseless--what you call it--distinctions--that the English set up!"
"But what is the cause?" asked Karl. Though it seemed to him that he could discern quite well without being answered.
Aglaé threw her shrewd eyes into his.
"I think, sir, you might tell it for yourself, that. She has not been well since that fever. She was not well before the fever, since--since about the month of May."