'Go up there,' he said to her. 'My lady's apartments are to the right. You will find her women.'
The man added in a whisper to one of his fellows: 'She came in through the gardens, we can swear that we never saw her enter if any mischief come of it;' and they watched her with languid curiosity as her dark figure passed up the lighted staircase, with its blue velvet carpets, its bronze caryatides, its great Japanese vases filled with azaleas, its arched recesses filled with palms and statues.
Presently she came to a wide landing place, where corridors branched off from side to side; it was lighted also, and here also its masses of blossom, its green fronds of ferns and palms were beautiful against the white marble and the blue hangings of the walls.
A servant was walking up and down awaiting orders. To him she said the same words: 'I come to see the Countess Othmar. Tell her I am here. I am Damaris Bérarde.'
CHAPTER LI.
She whom she sought was alone in her apartments within.
She was resting, after her drive, in her bed-chamber, which was lighted by silver lamps, and of which the furniture was all of ivory and silver, with hangings of white plush embroidered with spring flowers in silks of their natural colours. The bed in its alcove was watched over by the angel of sleep; a statue in silver, modelled by modern artists from a design of Canova's. White lilac and white jessamine filled large silver bowls of Indian artificers' work. The portrait of her children in the rose gardens of Amyôt, painted by Caband, stood on an easel draped with some cloth of silver of the fifteenth century. The floor was covered with white bearskins. It was a temple dedicated to rest and dreams; but it had given her neither of late. She was restless, disquieted, ill at ease, and dissatisfied with herself.
She had the same pale rose satin gown on her; in another hour she would dress again for a dinner at the Duchesse d'Uzès'; her hair was a little loosened, her face was weary, she had a knot of hothouse roses at her bosom; her women were asking instructions as to what jewels she would wear. Her old sense of the dulness of life was strong upon her; was it worth while to go on with it, all these days so alike, all these dressings and undressings, all these amusements which so seldom were amusements—tant de frais pour si peu de chose?