“Well! madame, who is always so pretty—I don’t know how it is, but with that cap madame has a stern, serious look.”
“Say at once that it makes me older, for that is what you don’t dare to say.”
“Oh! it isn’t that; madame can’t look old; that is impossible; but madame has a less animated, less coquettish air—that’s it, less coquettish.”
Madame de Grangeville snatched off her cap and threw it on a chair, crying:
“You are quite right, Lizida; this cap certainly does make me a frightful object.”
“Oh! frightful! As if madame could be frightful when—when she is so pretty!”
“Hush, child; take the cap; I give it to you, it’s yours, do what you choose with it.”
“Madame is too good; but I wouldn’t want madame to think——”
“I tell you to take that cap, I never want to hear of it again. Go and get me the little blue one that I wore before I bought that one.”
Mademoiselle Lizida ran from the room to fetch the cap which her mistress asked for, and handed it to her; then she made haste to take to her own room the cap for which the baroness had paid thirty-five francs and which she had worn but three times, saying to herself: