The shadow of a smile flitted over Madame de Tecle’s brown but charming face. “His niece?” she said: “I am his niece.”
“You I Pardon me, Madame, but I thought—they said—I expected to find an elderly—a—person—that is, a respectable” he hesitated, then added simply—“and I find I am in error.”
Madame de Tecle seemed completely unmoved by this compliment.
“Will you be kind enough, Monsieur,” she said, “to let me know whom I have the honor of receiving?”
“I am Monsieur de Camors.”
“Ah! Then I have excuses also to make. It was probably you whom we saw this morning. We have been very rude—my daughter and I—but we were ignorant of your arrival; and Reuilly has been so long deserted.”
“I sincerely hope, Madame, that your daughter and yourself will make no change in your rides.”
Madame de Tecle replied by a movement of the hand that implied certainly she appreciated the offer, and certainly she should not accept it. Then there was a pause long enough to embarrass Camors, during which his eye fell upon the piano, and his lips almost formed the original remark—“You are a musician, Madame.” Suddenly recollecting his tree, however, he feared to betray himself by the allusion, and was silent.
“You come from Paris, Monsieur de Camors?” Madame de Tecle at length asked.
“No, Madame, I have been passing several weeks with my kinsman, General de Campvallon, who has also the honor, I believe, to be a friend of yours; and who has requested me to call upon you.”