Madame de Chésy's remark had pointed too plainly to the significant coincidence of his disappearance and the absence of Madame de Carlsberg.
"And what were you doing only last night at the table of trente-et-quarante?" the young woman asked, teasingly. "If your sister knew of that; she who thinks her brother is basking prudently in the sun!"
"Don't scold him," interrupted Madame Bonnacorsi. "We brought him back with us."
"And you didn't finish telling us of your adventure," Madame de Carlsberg added.
The innocent teasing of Madame de Chésy had displeased her, because of the embarrassment it had caused in Hautefeuille. Now that he was there, living and breathing in the little room, she, too, felt that sensation of a loved one's presence which overpowers the strongest will. Never had the young man's face appeared more noble, his expression more attractive, his lips more delicate, his movements more graceful, his whole being more worthy of love. She discerned in his attitude that mingling of respect and passion, of timidity and idolatry irresistible to women who have suffered from the brutality of the male, and who dream of a love without hate, a tenderness without jealousy, voluptuous rapture devoid of violence.
She felt like crying to Yvonne de Chésy, "Stop. Don't you see that you are wounding him?" But she knew well that the thoughtless woman had not an atom of malice in her heart. She was one of the modern women of Paris, very innocent with a very bad tone, playing childishly with scandal, but very virtuous at heart—one of those imprudent women who sometimes pay with their honor and happiness for that innocent desire to astonish and amuse. And she continued, revealing her whole character in the anecdote which Hautefeuille's arrival had interrupted:—
"The end of my adventure? I have already told you that this gentleman took me for one of those demoiselles. At Nice, a little woman, dining all alone at a little table in a little restaurant. And he was doing his best to call my attention with his 'hum! hum!'—I felt like offering him gumdrops—and his 'waiter!' perfectly useless to make me turn. And I did turn, not much, just enough, to let him see me—without laughing. I wanted to badly enough! Finally I paid, rose, and left. He paid. He rose. He left. I didn't know what to do to get to the train. He followed me. I let myself be followed.—Have you ever wondered, when you think of those demoiselles, what they say to them to begin with?"
"Things which I think I should be rather afraid to hear," said Madame Bonnacorsi.
"I don't think so any longer," Madame de Chésy replied; "for it is just as stupid as what these gentlemen say to us. I stopped before the window of a florist. He stopped beside me on my left. I looked at the bouquets. He looked at the bouquets. I heard his old 'hum! hum!' He was going to speak. 'Those are fine roses, madame,' he said. 'Yes, monsieur, they are fine roses.' 'Are you very fond of flowers, madame?' I was just going to say, 'Yes, monsieur, I am very fond of flowers,' when a voice on my right called out, 'Well, Yvonne, you here?' And I was face to face with the Grand Duchess Vera Paulovna, and at the same moment I saw my follower turning the color of the roses we had been looking at together, as he, stammering, bowed before Her Imperial Highness, and she, with her Russian accent, 'My dear, allow me to present the Count Serge Kornow, one of my most charming compatriots.' Tableau!"
The laughing woman had scarcely finished her account of this childish prank, told with the inexplicable but well-known pleasure which women of society find in the contact with the demi-monde, when the sudden entrance of a new personage into the parlor arrested the laughter or the reproof of the friends who had been listening to this gay narrative.