Damaris coloured angrily.
She resented the intrusion of this stranger, whose impertinent and familiar manners offended her, and seemed to her a personal insolence. At Loswa she did not look. His presence was unwelcome to her, and brought back the memories of Bonaventure so strongly that it was with difficulty that she kept the tears from rising to her eyes. How far away it seemed, that sunny noonday, when she had made him welcome to her little balcony amongst the orange boughs and the lemon leaves! And then how basely he had repaid her and betrayed her, and brought his friends to laugh at her, as he had brought this woman of fashion now!
Blanchette continued to gaze at her with unsparing examination, and Loswa continued to make to her those pretty speeches of graceful compliment of which he was a finished master. She grew angered and stubborn under the eye of the one and deaf and contemptuous to the flatteries of the other. Why had they come? When would they depart? These were the only two questions in her thoughts.
She was troubled, too, by the abrupt mention of Othmar, and uncertain what she ought to say, how she should reply. If only Rosselin had been there! He would have known how to meet these insolent gay people, who stared at her as though she were some curious strange beast; he would have stood between her and their persistent inquisitive examination. But the visit of Rosselin had been paid on the previous day, and he would not return until the morrow. The woman of the house was at the market of Versailles; she was wholly alone; and she had lost the dauntless, careless courage with which she had treated Loswa on the island, the courage born of childish ignorance and of childish audacity. Life seemed now very difficult and intricate to her, and her steps in it were shy and unsure.
'If I ever do go before the world I shall probably fail,' she said wearily, in answer to their continued allusions to her coming career.
'Fail!' echoed Blanche de Laon, breaking in roughly on the graceful protestations of Loswa. 'You will not fail, you shall not fail; it would please her too much. Dame! how unlike you are to us! You look as if you were made of some other stuff than we are made of; you look as if you had come fresh out of the sea like the Greek goddess that is in the Salon every year. Has she seen you again? You ought to let her see you now.'
'Who?' said Damaris.
'Who?' said Blanchette, and muttered in her small white teeth 'Ah! ça fait l'innocente, ça se pose!——'