As she chattered she clasped it round the throat of her cousin, who grew red, then white, as the pearls touched her skin. They made her realise the immense change which one short day had made in her lot. They made her realise that Othmar henceforth was her lover.
While Blanchette chirped and skipped around her, directing her toilette with the accurate instinct in decoration of a little Parisienne, the eyes of the girl were suffused with unshed tears of gratitude and tremulous joy.
‘What can I render thee, O princely giver?’
she was saying in her heart, although she had never read the Portuguese sonnets; while her little cousin babbled on of jewels and ball-dresses, and horses and establishments, and dowries and settlements, and the régime dotal, and all the many matters which meant marriage to the precocious comprehension of Blanchette.
‘You will have your box at all the theatres, will you not? You have never been to a theatre, but I have. Mind that you go the evening after your marriage. When will your marriage be? I heard mamma say that he wished it to be very soon: but then there is all your lingerie, and all your gowns to be made. I suppose mamma will give you your trousseau; she must. Oh, how happy you ought to be, and you look just as grave as an owl! Nobody would guess you were going to be the Countess Othmar. Do you know that he could be made a prince if he liked? You have never learned to ride, Yseulte. What a pity! It is so chic to ride early in the Bois. Well, you will have a coupé for the early morning, and then you will have a Daumont for the afternoon, of course. There is nothing so pretty as postillions in velvet jackets and caps—if you only knew what colour his liveries are? Won’t you have out-riders? I do not know, though, whether you can; I think it is only ambassadresses and princesses of the blood who may have out-riders——You might have a special train every day,’ continued Blanchette, exciting herself with her own visions. ‘There is nothing such fun as a special train; we had one when grandmère was dying at Bois le Roy all in a moment and wanted to see us; it is so diverting to go on, on, on, through all the stations, past all the other trains, never stopping—pr-r-r-rut!’
‘Oh, hush, Blanchette! What do I care about those things?’ murmured Yseulte, as she put his note into the casket, locked it, and slipped the little silver key in her bosom, blushing very much as she did so.
It seemed so very wonderful to her that such lines should have been written to her. She wanted to be all alone to muse upon the marvel of it. She remembered a little nook in the convent garden where a bench was fixed against the high stone wall, under the branches of an old medlar tree; a place that she had gone to with her sorrows, her fancies, her visions, her tears, very often; she would have liked to have gone now to some such quiet and solitary nook, to realise in peace this miracle which had been wrought for her. But that was impossible; they had ordered her to dine with them at eight—her first great dinner. She must submit to be gazed at, commented on, complimented, felicitated.
The sensitive, delicate nature of the child shrank from the publicity of her triumph; but she understood that it was her duty, that henceforth these things would be a prominent portion of her duties; the wife of Othmar could not live shut away from the world.
Blanchette tossed her golden head with immeasurable contempt.