His vanity and his good sense alike counselled him to retire from a position which would avail him nothing; but a certain malice, which was a part of his character, and which his little daughter had inherited in increased degree, prompted him first to take reprisal for the indifference of his reception. Yseulte remained standing, holding the hand of Blanchette, evidently not desiring that he should be long there, and giving him no invitation to protract his visit until her breakfast hour. Blanchette’s mischievous eyes watched her father’s visible annoyance with keen appreciation of it; she had not forgotten the medallion given at Millo, and she had guessed very well why she had received the extraordinary honour of a seat in his brougham as he drove to the Jockey. She had been just about to leave the house with her maid when the Duc, passing her in the vestibule, had said carelessly: ‘Is it you, you little cat? Ah, you are going to your cousin. Well, jump in with me, and I will set you down as I pass; I am going to the Jockey.’ Now Blanchette knew as well as he did that the way from their house to the Jockey Club did not by any means lie past the Hôtel d’Othmar; but she had been too shrewd to say that, and too proud of driving beside her father, who smoked a big cheroot, and told her about the little theatres.
‘Can I see Othmar?’ he asked now, as he made his adieux to Yseulte.
‘I am sorry, but he is just gone out,’ she answered; ‘I think he is gone for some hours; I do not know where.’
‘You will soon learn not to say so,’ thought the Duc, diverted even in his discomfiture by her simplicity. He said aloud:
‘Do you think he may have gone to see the Napraxines? He was always a great friend of theirs, and they arrived last night; it is in all the papers, but then you do not read the papers. I only ask, because I should be so glad if I could meet him anywhere. The Prefect of Nice writes to me about the basin of Millo; now S. Pharamond has much more sea-front and much larger share of the harbour than we have, and if Othmar would use his influence, one word from him——’
‘I will tell him; he will be sure to come to you or write to you,’ she said quickly. She had flinched a little at the name of the Napraxine, which no one had spoken to her since that silver statue of the Love with the empty gourd had been sent to her before her marriage.
‘Bien joué, petit papa,’ thought Blanchette, with understanding and appreciation, as her father bowed himself out of Othmar’s library.
‘Oh, how happy you are!—how I wish I were you!’ she cried, five minutes later, as she skipped about her cousin’s boudoir, while the glow of the fire of olive-wood shone on the panels which Bougereau had painted there with groups of those charming nude children which he can set frolicking with almost the soft poetic grace of Correggio.
Yseulte smiled on the little impudent face of the child, who leaned her elbows on her knees as she spoke.