‘She does not care, she is such a stupid,’ said Blanchette, with all the superiority of measureless scorn.
‘Papa was giving you something: what did he give you?’ said Toinon. ‘He said you were handsome the other night to mamma, I heard him. Mamma was angry.’
‘Mamma did not care,’ said Blanchette. ‘If it had been the Marquis Raymond!’——
Then the little sisters laughed.
Yseulte with difficulty escaped from her little tormentors, and wandered alone through the pretty grounds; while the closed shutters of the villa of Millo showed that her cousin and her house-party were still sleeping after the cotillon with which Othmar’s party had closed; an improvised and unexpected cotillon, for which, nevertheless, there had been all manner of admirable surprises, marvellous novelties, and costly presents.
When she was quite alone she took out her pearl medallion and looked at it with all a child’s rapture at a toy and something of a woman’s pleasure in a jewel. The kindness of her cousin de Vannes overwhelmed her. She had known him now and then, as she passed the doors of the billiard-room, or watched the drag roll out of the courtyard, give her a careless, good-tempered nod and a lazy word or two, but never any more notice than that, which was as much as Blanchette and Toinon ever received from him. At such times as he had come down to Bois le Roy or Millo, when she was there, she had heard of him as a man only devoted to horses and dogs, to sport of all sorts, to his stag-hounds and boar-hounds and otter-hounds, to his coach and his stud and his great chasses; she knew that he was a very grand gentleman in Paris, and at Bois le Roy—despite all revolutions—was a kind of king. And he had thought about her so much that he had bought her a locket! She could scarcely believe it.
She sat in a little nook made by magnolias that overhung the sea, and saw the sun shine on her dove of pearls, and wondered if she would dare to wear it; would the Duchess approve of it? There was only one thing which disturbed her, it was his recommendation to silence; there had been a look in his eyes, too, when he had said, ‘You are very handsome, fillette,’ which haunted her with a vague uneasiness. She was too utterly innocent to be alarmed by it, but a certain instinct in her shrank from the remembrance of that regard. It was the first look of sensual admiration which had been ever given her, and though he had added ‘Of course you must tell Cri-Cri,’ he had said it grudgingly, as though he would willingly, if he could have ventured to do so, have bidden her keep his gift a secret from his wife.
‘Are you counting your jewels, Mademoiselle de Valogne?’ said the voice of Othmar. ‘Leave that until you are thirty years older and need their aid.’
Without any thought of her he had been strolling on the rocks above the little harbour which belonged equally to S. Pharamond and to Millo. He had been bathing and swimming, and was returning to his house, when he caught sight of her seated beneath the magnolias.
Yseulte coloured, and rose to her feet, dropping the medallion in her surprise as his voice startled her from her meditation. Othmar picked it up and returned it to her.