'Neither,' said Damaris. She was angered, though she did not divine how many napoleons had passed into Raphael's hand, who had been pruning olives, and had had much trouble to hold back the faithful Clovis, for whom gold had no charm.
'If Brunehildt had not been shut up with her puppies,' she added regretfully; 'she is much more savage than Clovis.'
'You seem very sorrowful that we did not all have the fate of Penelope's suitors,' said Nadine, much amused. 'We are the friends of Monsignor Melville; may not that fact protect us? Is your grandfather at home?'
No; he was away in the sloop; gone to St. Jean with a cargo. Damaris did not add that he would have been much worse to pass than even Brunehildt.
'But I pray you come into the house, Madame,' she added, her natural courtesy gaining the ascendancy over her embarrassment. 'It is a poor place, but there is a fine view, and if I had only known——'
'You would have been endimanchée and hideous,' thought Nadine, as she answered with her sweetest grace that she would go willingly to that balcony of the beauties of which she had heard so much from Loswa.
'All her eyes are for me,' she whispered to Béthune. 'She does not see that any of you exist.'
'I suppose,' rejoined Béthune, 'that we, after all, do not differ so very much from Raphael and Gros Louis; but between a woman and a woman of the world there is as much difference as between a raw egg and a soufflé, between a hen and a peahen.'
'You might find a more poetic comparison; say a poppy and a gardenia,' said Nadine smiling. 'She is not at the age to think of you. Have patience; ça viendra. She is really very handsome, lovelier than Loswa's sketch.'
Damaris, meanwhile, was thinking with agony that there were ready no cakes, no cream, no white bread, nothing which this delicate and ethereal visitant would be able to touch—thinking of the linen swinging in the wind, and of the bacon grey with smoke, and of Catherine, who, on washing-days, was in her crossest mood!