Then the two officials laughed a little under their breath. Their words and their laughter came upwards distinctly to her ear. Her first impulse was a natural and passionate one of bitter burning pain and wonder. A sensation wholly new to her, of hatred and of impotence combined, seemed to choke her.
'Is this what they call jealousy?' she thought, and the mere thought checked her emotion and changed it to humiliation.
'I—I—contend with her!' she said in her soul. With a blindness before her eyes she retraced her steps, and went to the sleeping-rooms of her children. They were all asleep as they had been for hours. She sat down beside the bed of the little Ottilie; and gazed on the soft flushed loveliness of the child, bright as a rose in the dew.
She kissed the child's cheek without waking her, and sat still there some time in the faint twilight and the perfect silence, only stirred by the light breathing of the sleepers; the repose, the innocence, the silence soothed and tranquillised her.
'What matter a breath of folly?' she thought. 'He is their father; he is my love; we have all our lives to spend together.'
Then she rose and went to her chamber, and had herself clothed in a court dress of white taffetas and white velvet, embroidered with silver lilies.
'Make me look well,' she said to her women. 'Put on all my diamonds.'
When he entered, near midnight, repentant, self-conscious, almost confused, she stopped his excuses with a smile.
'I heard the servants say you dined with my cousin's wife. Why not, if it please you? But I wonder she allows you to dine without un bout de toilette. Will you not make haste to dress? We shall be late.'
The words were perfectly simple and kind, but as she spoke them, so royal did she look, standing there in the blaze of her jewels, with her lily-laden train, that he felt abashed, ashamed, angered against himself, yet more angered against his temptress.