With the turn of the year and the springing of the crocuses her cousins had come to Millo. When she was in their presence she was more careful than at any other time that no one should see in her any pain which could be construed by them into a reproach against Othmar.
‘She grows proud and cold,’ said the Duchesse. ‘The women of her blood have always been like that—religious and austere. It is a pity. It will age her before her time; and it is not at all liked in the world nowadays—save just at Lent.’
Blanchette, with her keen mysotis-coloured eyes, saw farther than her mother saw. She did not dare to tease her cousin, or to banter her, but she looked sometimes with curiosity and wonder in her face.
One day, in a softer mood than was usual with her, she came over the gardens from Millo and found her way to her cousin. Blanchette liked to be welcome at S. Pharamond; her shrewd little senses smelt the fragrance in all wealth which dogs find in the truffle; she was always asking for things and getting them, and though she was afraid of Othmar as far as she could be of anyone, she retained amongst her respect for Yseulte’s position her derision for what she termed her romanticism, her Puritanism, and her habitual ignorance of how to extract the honey of self-indulgence from the flowers of pleasure. But Blanchette had all the wisdom of the world in her little fair, curly head, and though at times her malicious impulses conquered her judgment, she usually repressed them out of reverence for the many good gifts which fell to her from her cousin’s hands, and those instincts of ‘modernity’ which forced her to worship where so much riches were.
She came into the garden salon this day, the one where Melville had once said to Othmar that to make a home was in the power of any man not a priest. Her eyes were watchful and her manner important; but Yseulte, to whom the child’s presence was always irksome, though her gratitude to their mother forced her always to receive the little sisters with apparent willingness, had not observation enough, or thought enough of her, to notice those signs. She was alone; it was two hours after the noon breakfast; Othmar was away, she knew not where; he had gone out early in the forenoon. She was lost in the weariness of those thoughts which occupied her unceasingly, when the pretty gay figure of the child tripped up to her side, and the thin high voice of her began its endless chatter.
‘They were talking about you yesterday after the déjeuner,’ she said, after her discursive gossip had embraced every subject and person then of interest to her, pecking at each one of them furtively, petulantly, as a well-fed mouse pecks at crumbs of cake. ‘They were saying how beautiful you were; even mamma said that, and they all agreed that if only you were not so grave, so cold, so almost stiff, nobody would be admired more than you. But men think you do not care, so they do not care. It is true,’ added Blanchette, studying the face of her cousin out of the corner of her eye, ‘it is true that the Princess Napraxine, whom they are always so mad about, is just as indifferent too. But then it is another kind of indifference—hers. She is always provoking them with it, on purpose. You go through a room as if you were saying a paternoster under your breath. It is a great difference——’
‘It is, no doubt, a great difference,’ said Yseulte, with more bitterness than she was aware of; the idle words struck at the hidden wound within her. The difference was vast indeed between herself and the woman whom her husband loved!
Blanchette watched her sharply, herself sitting on a stool at her feet.
‘Do you know,’ she said, pulling the ears of Yseulte’s great dog, ‘that she is coming—indeed, I think, is here? I heard them say so yesterday. It seems that the Prince bought that little villa and gave it to her—La Jacquemerille—when they were here two years ago. She is very rich, you know. Her husband has left her such immense properties, and then I think she had a great deal of money all of her own, before his death, from some distant relative, who left it to her because she did not want it; it is always like that.’
Yseulte rose abruptly. Blanchette could not see her face, but she saw her left hand, which trembled.