‘It will be a great advantage if he find her so, but perhaps only others will find her so; marriage does not lend rose-coloured spectacles to its disciples,’ thought the Baron, as he answered aloud, ‘There can be no one’s opinion that he could value as much as he is sure to do that of Madame Napraxine.’
‘I imagine my opinion matters nothing at all to him,’ she answered, with her enigmatical smile. ‘But when I see him I shall certainly be able to congratulate him with much more truth than one can usually put into those conventionalities. Mademoiselle de Valogne is very beautiful.’
The Baron sadly recalled the saying of that wise man who was of opinion that it makes little difference after three months whether your wife be a Venus or a Hottentot; but he did not utter this blasphemy to a lovely woman.
The girl remained on her sofa gazing wistfully after this élégante who had all the knowledge which she lacked, and who impressed her so sadly with an indefinite dull sense of inferiority and of helplessness. She put her hand up to her throat and felt for his pearls; they seemed like friends; they seemed to assure her of his affection and of the future. People thought she was proud of them because they were so large, so perfect in colour and shape, so royal in their value; she would have been as pleased with them if they had been strings of berries out of the woods, and he had sent them with the same message and meaning.
She watched Nadine Napraxine with fascinated eyes; wondering where was the secret of that supreme seduction which even she, in her convent-bred simplicity, could feel was in her. In the few words which had been addressed to her she was dimly conscious that the other disdained her as a child, and derided Othmar as a fool.
Madame de Vannes roused her from her preoccupation with a tap of her fan.
‘How grave you look, fillette,’ she said with some impatience. ‘You must never look like that now you are in the world. Everyone detests grave people. If you cannot always smile, stay in your convent.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ murmured Yseulte, waking from her meditation with a little shock. ‘I did not know—I was thinking——’
‘That is just what you must not do when you are in society. What were you thinking of? You looked very sombre.’