‘Kind to you!’ echoed her cousin, ‘a most fortuitous phrase, but not one that young girls can employ except to their own ridicule and injury. Pray how has he been kind to you? has he given you a locket?’
Yseulte might easily have told a lie; no one knew of the casket, no one could tell of it; she loved it more dearly than anything she had ever possessed. But she had been taught in her childhood that falsehood was cowardice, and the courage of the de Valogne was in her; therefore she answered, with an unsteady voice indeed, but with entire truthfulness, ‘He has given me a very beautiful box, it is made of ivory and painted, it came yesterday——’
Madame de Vannes burst into another laugh, which jarred on the child’s ear:
‘Really,’ she cried, relapsing into the manner most natural to her, ‘you begin well! Othmar and my husband! and you are not quite sixteen yet, and we all thought you such a little demure saint in your grey clothes! Send the casket to me. You cannot receive presents in that way. From your cousin, passe encore, but from a man like Othmar—you might as well go and sup with him at Bignon’s. Good heavens! What are Schemmitz and Brown about that they have let you meet him? Where have you seen him? how have you become intimate with him?’
Yseulte had become very pale. She had done her duty; done what honour, truth, obedience, and gratitude all required; but it had cost her a great effort, and she would lose the casket.
‘I have only seen him three times,’ she said, with her colour changing; and she went on to tell the story of her visit to his gardens, of his conversation with her on the seashore, of the priest’s soutane, and of their meeting at the house of Nicole. It was a very simple inoffensive little story, but it hurt her greatly to tell it; cost her quite as much as it would have done Madame de Vannes to unfold all her manifold indiscretions in full confession before a conseil de famille.
‘He has been very kind to me,’ she said timidly, as she finished her little tale, ‘and if—if—if you would only let me keep the casket and take it to Faïel?’
The Duchesse laughed once more:
‘You do not care to keep the Duc’s locket—how flattering to him! Really, fillette, you are sagacious betimes; I would never have believed you such a cunning little cat! Did you learn all that at the convent? you convent-girls are more rusées than so many rats! Othmar, of all men of the world! My dear, you might as well wish for an emperor. There is not a marriageable woman in Europe who does not sigh for Othmar! He is so enormously rich! There is no one else rich like that; all the other financiers have a tribe of people belonging to them. “The family” is everywhere, at Paris, at Vienna, at Berlin, at London, and have as many branches as the oak; but Othmar is absolutely alone—for old Baron Fritz does not count—he is absolutely alone, that is what is unique in him. Whoever marries him will be the most fortunate woman in Europe. Yes, I say it advisedly, it is fortune that is power nowadays; our day is over; we do not even lead society any longer.’
The colour had rushed back into Yseulte’s face; the Duchesse’s words tortured her as only a very young and sensitive creature can be tortured by an indelicate and cruel suspicion. ‘I never thought, I never meant,’ she murmured. ‘You know, my cousin, I am dedicated to the religious life; you cannot suppose that I—I——’ The words choked her.