A heavy sigh accompanied this loved name, repeated with passionate tenderness. That innocent affection which suffered from the faults of its idol without daring to formulate a reproach, touched the Baroness, and made her a little ashamed. She disguised her feelings in a laugh, which she attempted to make gay, in order to quiet her friend's emotion.
"How fortunate that I didn't see you! I should have borrowed money from you and lost it. But do not worry; it will not happen again. I had heard so often of the gambling fever that I wished just once, not to trifle as I usually do, but really play. It is even more annoying than it was stupid. I regret nothing but the cigarette case." She hesitated a moment. "It was the souvenir of a person who is no longer in this world. But I shall find the merchant to-morrow."
"That is useless," said Madame Brion, quickly. "He no longer has it."
"You have already bought it? How I recognize my dear friend in that!"
"I thought of doing it," Louise answered in a low voice, "but some one else was before me."
"Some one else?" said Madame de Carlsberg, with a sudden look of haughtiness. "Whom you saw and whom I know?" she asked.
"Whom I saw and whom you know," answered Madame Brion. "But I dare not tell the name, now that I see how you take it.—And yet, it is not one whom you have the right to blame, for if he has fallen in love with you, it is indeed your fault. You have been so imprudent with him—let me say it, so coquettish!"
Then, after a silence: "It was young Pierre Hautefeuille."
The excellent woman felt her heart beat as she pronounced these last words. She was anxious to prevent Madame de Carlsberg from continuing a flirtation which she thought dangerous and culpable; but the anger which she had seen come into her friend's face made her fear that she had gone too far, and would draw down upon the head of the imprudent lover one of Ely's fits of rage, and she reproached herself as for an indelicacy, almost a treachery toward the poor boy whose tender secret she had surprised.
But it was not anger that, at the mention of this name, had changed the expression of Madame de Carlsberg and flushed her cheeks with a sudden red. Her friend, who knew her so well, could see that she was overcome with emotion, but very different from her injured pride of a moment before. She was so astonished that she stopped speaking. The Baroness made no answer, and the two women walked on in silence. They had entered an alley of palm trees, flecked with moonlight, but still obscure. And as Madame Brion could no longer see the face of her friend, her own emotions became so strong that she hazarded, tremblingly:—