"I will help her. Such an action will surely bring me good luck."
Turning away, she said:—
"Do not be alarmed. I cannot speak to you just now, as I am expecting some one. But come again to-morrow afternoon and I promise you I will have found the very thing you want for Gontran. Let me act as I think best,—and, above all, no weakness!—No one must suspect anything.—You must never let people know that you suffer!"
The heroic counsel was addressed to herself. And she illustrated the remark at the same moment, for the footman opened the door and announced Monsieur Olivier du Prat. Madame de Chésy could never have guessed, to see Ely so calm, with such a welcoming smile, what Hautefeuille's mistress felt as she saw the newcomer enter the little salon. Olivier, not less calm and polite than the two women, excused himself for not having called sooner.
"You are forgiven," said Yvonne, who had risen upon Olivier's entrance and had remained standing. "Really, if the society round had to be gone through on one's wedding journey, it would not be worth while having a honeymoon.—Make yours last as long as you can! That is the advice your old cotillon partner gives you—and excuse me for running away. Gontran was to come and meet me, and I don't want to miss him."
Then, turning to Ely, with a parting kiss, she said, in a whisper:—
"Are you satisfied with me?"
And the courageous little woman went off with a smile that her friend 'had hardly strength enough to return. Olivier's first glance had been a terrible trial to support for Madame de Carlsberg. She read in it so distinctly that brutality of a physical souvenir so intolerable for a woman after the breaking off of an intrigue, so intolerable, in fact, that they often prefer the scandal of an open rupture rather than undergo the torture of meeting a man whose eyes say plainly: "Go on with your comedy, my dear friend! Receive everybody's adulation, respect, affection! I know you, and nothing you understand, nothing can efface that souvenir."
In love, as she was, still glowing with the memory of Hautefeuille's caresses of the past night, Ely's soul was so wrung by this impression that she could have shrieked had she dared. She had only one idea, to cut his visit short. She felt that if it was prolonged to any extent she should faint before the end. But, suffering torture though she was, terrified to the verge of unconsciousness, she was still the woman of the world, the semi-princess, one who preserves her dignity in the midst of the most cruel explanations. And she had all the grace of a queen as she said to the man who had once been her lover and whom she so much dreaded:—
"You wished to see me? I might have refused to receive you, for I have that right. But I would not exercise it.—Still, I beg you to remember that this interview is hideously painful to me. Whatever you have to tell me, say it without a word that can increase my suffering, if it is possible.—You see, I have neither hostility, bitterness, nor distrust for you. Spare me any insinuations, any sarcasm, any cruelty.—It is all I ask, and it is my right."