‘I don’t wish that at all,’ said Blanchette sturdily. ‘She pinches, she gobbles, and she is vulgar, if you like; she swears like the grooms. You know our rooms overlook the stables; we can hear all the men say when they are cleaning the horses. Toinon makes signals to the English tiger Bob, and he to her. Toinon will only marry someone who keeps a fine meute and good colours for a hunting-dress. She only lives for the Cours Hippique. She got her sore throat because she would go on M. de Rochmont’s break when it was raining.’
‘Poor Toinon! You ought to be so fond of each other. If I had had a sister——’
‘Ab-bah!’ said Blanchette; ‘you would have hated her! I can never have a scrap of pleasure in a new frock because Toinon always has one too; I know I do not make half the effect I should do if I were all alone!’
‘Hush! If Toinon died, only think how sorry you would be!’
Blanchette laughed in silence; she did not dare to say so, but she thought that if Toinon did die it would be a bore in one way, because death always dressed one in black, and shut one up in the house; but otherwise—there were quantities of Toinon’s things which she would like to possess herself, and in especial a set of pink coral, which Toinon’s godmother, the Queen of Naples, had given her, which was delicious. Blanchette’s own godmother was but little use to her, being a most religious and most rigid Marquise, who dwelt on her estates in a lonely part of La Vendée, and only made her presents of holy books and crucifixes and relics in little antique boxes.
‘Do you know, Yseulte,’ she continued, with her persistent prattle, as she hopped round the room, examining and appraising as accurately as a dealer at the Drouot the treasures which it contained, ‘they make bets about you at the clubs? How nice that is! Nobody is anything in Paris till the clubs do that. Papa and the Marquis have a hundred thousand francs on it, and mamma laughs;—they think I don’t hear these things, but I do.’
‘Bets on me?’ repeated Yseulte in wonder. ‘Why should they bet about me?’
‘Oh, they bet as to whether you will be the first to flanquer Count Othmar, or he you. They often make that sort of bet when people marry. Papa is all for you; he says you will be flanquée, and bear it like an angel,—“like a two-sous print of S. Marie!” said mamma.’