“Yes, you understand well enough! That is, unless he likes it. Bless my soul! there are husbands whom that sort of thing just suits! Did you spend the night at that place?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“Mon Dieu! how rural! Did you stay there several days? Come, Bertrand, speak out—you have time enough to eat; you know that I haven’t set foot inside this door for an age, and Monsieur Auguste hasn’t so much as had the decency to come to inquire for my health. And yet I’ve been very ill; I nearly died! I am ever so much changed, am I not, Bertrand?”
“Why, no, mademoiselle, I don’t see that——”
“Oh, yes! the whites of my eyes are yellow yet. To be sure this dress isn’t becoming. It’s too high, it cramps me.—Well, Bertrand, what did you do in the country?”
“I taught Monsieur Destival the manual, mademoiselle.”
“Oho! is he going to enlist in the voltigeurs? How about his wife—does she do the manual too? She ought to learn to drum so that she can march in front of her husband when he goes out to fire his gun.”
“I don’t know what madame was doing, mademoiselle.”
“Of course not; it was your business to keep the husband busy, while Monsieur Auguste dallied with madame in the thick shrubbery! I can see that man firing at crows while his wife hunts strawberries! Ha! ha!”
Mademoiselle Virginie laughed so heartily that it was several minutes before she could speak again. Meanwhile Bertrand paced the salon floor, continuing his breakfast.