‘They belong to another time than ours,’ said Othmar. ‘I imagine Talleyrand was right when he said that no one born since ‘89 can know how sweet human life can become.’
‘And how elegant human manners can be,’ added Melville. ‘Cendrillon has something of that old grace; when she was two years old she curtseyed as though she were Sevigné’s self.’
‘What a paragon!’ said Madame Napraxine. ‘Poverty and all the Graces! An irresistible combination. The time I should have liked to live in would have been Louis Treize’s; what perfect costume, what picturesque wars, what admirable architecture! Is this child at Sacré Cœur, did you say, Monsignore?’
‘That would be too extravagant for her place as Cendrillon,’ replied Melville. ‘No; I think they were wise not to put her amidst all those great ladies in embryo; she has been educated by the Dames de Ste. Anne, at a remote village called Faiël in the Morbihan. She has had a pale girlhood there, like the arum-lily that blossoms under the moss-grown oaks.’
‘How poetic you are!’ said the Princess Napraxine, with a smile which brought a flush of embarrassment even to the world-bronzed cheek of Melville. ‘Men are so much more romantic than women. Here are Clotilde de Vannes and I, who only see that, as this young girl has no dower, the very best place for her in the world is a convent, melancholy but inevitable; whereas you and Othmar, merely because she has pretty hair which the sun shines on as she goes past amongst her oranges, are already thinking that some one ought to rise out of the sea to marry her, with a duke’s couronne in one hand and a veil of old d’Alençon lace in the other! Certainly those things do happen. If she were an impudent écuyère at Hengler’s, or a Californian who never had a grandfather, the duke’s couronne would no doubt appear on her horizon. By the way, pending her eternal retreat, does Cri-Cri allow her to be seen at all?’
‘You will probably see her at Millo. I saw her there last week, and made her cry by reminding her of her babyhood on the isle; and of her grandmother, whom she adored. She is with the Duchesse now, because there is typhus fever at the convent, and the pupils are all dispersed; but Millo is scarcely a congenial air for a poor relation, who is also a proud one.’
‘Ah! she is a good advertisement of Cri-Cri’s virtues, elle en a besoin,’ said the Princess Napraxine, with her merciless little laugh. ‘And de Vannes, what does he say to so pretty a relative?’
‘A man like de Vannes never sees that a young girl of that type exists.’
‘Hum—m—mph!’ she murmured dubiously. ‘That depends on a great many circumstances. Propinquity and ennui will make Ste. Scholastique herself sought like the Krauss or Jeanne Granier. Millo is certainly a very odd kind of home for your woodland arum-lily. If she have any intelligence at all, and relate what she sees when she gets back to Faiël, the good Dames de Ste. Anne will have the monastic enjoyment of scandal gratified to the uttermost.’
‘I believe she lives entirely in the schoolroom whilst at Millo,’ said Melville, a little impatiently. He wished he had never spoken the name of Yseulte de Valogne, the name which seemed to belong to le temps quand la Reine Berthe fila. He had one of those instincts of having spoken unwisely, one of those presentiments of impending disaster, which come to finely organised and much-experienced minds, and are called by blunter and slower brains mere nervous nonsense.