"When I was a boy I had a Claude glass, but they break very soon; or rather, as you say, grow dark and dim with the smoke of society. But you ask me about these people. You know them, do you not, as they are your uncle's guests?"
She shook her head.
"I have been here but a week or two. For the last two years I have been vegetating among the fens, with a maiden aunt of poor papa's."
"And did you like the country?"
"Like it!" cried Valérie, "I was buried alive. Everything was so dreadfully punctual and severe in that house, that I believe the very cat had forgotten how to purr. Breakfast at eight, drive at two, dinner at five, prayers at ten. Can't you fancy the dreary diurnal round, with a pursy old rector or two, and three or four high-dried county princesses as callers once a quarter? Luckily, I can amuse myself, but oh, you cannot think how I sickened of the monotony, how I longed to live! At last, I grew so naughty, I was expelled."
"May I inquire your sins?" asked Falkenstein, really amused for once.
She laughed at the remembrance.
"I read 'Notre-Dame' against orders, and I rode the fat old mare round the paddock without a saddle. I saw no harm in it; as a child, I read and rode everything I came near, but the rough-riding was condemned as unfeminine, and any French book, were it even the 'Génie du Christianisme,' or the 'Petit Carême,' would be regarded by Aunt Agatha, who doesn't know a word of the language, as a powder magazine of immorality and infidelity."
"C'est la profonde ignorance qui inspire le ton dogmatique," laughed Falkenstein. "But surely you have been accustomed to society."
"No, never; but I am made for it, I fancy," said Valérie, with an unconscious compliment to herself. "When I was with the dear old Tenth, I used to enjoy myself, but I was a child then. The officers were very kind to me—gentlemen always are much more so than ladies"—("Pour cause," thought Waldemar, as she went on)—"but ever since then I have vegetated as I tell you, in much the same still life as the anemones in my vase."