‘I am very happy,’ she said, with perfect truth. ‘But I hope you will be as much so one day, Blanchette.’
Blanchette nodded.
‘I shall marry into the finance too; the noblesse is finished; papa says so. He said yesterday, “Nous sommes de vieux bonzes—emballons-nous!”’
Blanchette tied her arms and legs in a knot as she had seen a clown do, and made a pantomimic show of being rolled away on a wheelbarrow; then she gathered herself up and came and stood before her cousin and hostess.
‘Te voilà, grande dame!’ she cried, looking at her with her own little pert flaxen head, with its innumerable little curls held on one side critically, as she surveyed Yseulte from head to foot with a frank astonishment and admiration. It was only such a little while ago that Yseulte had been her butt and victim at Millo; that she had ridiculed her for her grey convent dress, her thick shoes, her primitive, pious habits, brought from the Breton woods, and lo!—here she stood, ‘très grande dame!’ as Blanchette, a severe judge in such matters, acknowledged to herself. So tall, so elegant, so stately, with her beautiful slender hands covered with great rings, and her morning-gown a cascade of marvellous old lace. ‘She looks quite twenty years old!’ thought Blanchette. ‘How nice it must be to be married, if one get grown up all at once like that!’
She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was unusually quiet for a little time, during which her terrible eyes scanned every detail of Yseulte’s appearance, from the pearl solitaire at her throat to the gold buckles in her shoes. Then, with a shriek of laughter, she cried aloud:
‘Do you remember when you came first to us you had leather shoes—leather!—and no heels, and mamma sent you at once to have some proper shoes; and how you could not walk a step in them, and cried?’
‘I remember,’ said Yseulte good-humouredly, ‘but I wonder you do—you were so little.’
‘Oh, I never forget anything,’ replied Blanchette, sagely. ‘What beautiful feet you have now, and you are so grown, so grown! And I want to see all your jewels. Mamma says they are wonderful. I love jewels.’
‘You shall see them, if you like, by-and-bye. But you did see many before my marriage.’