“I regret not having met Madame de Roux. One would like to see de Moulny’s reigning goddess.”
“She is most beautiful in person and countenance. Your term of ‘goddess’ is not inappropriate. She walks as though on clouds.”
Her ungrudging admiration of another woman’s beauty was a trait in her that always pleased him.
“Where did you meet?”
“I saw her in Paris a twelvemonth back, on the steps that lead to the vestibule of the Théâtre Française, one night when Rachel was to play in ‘Phédre.’”
“I thought you had forsworn all public entertainments, theaters included?”
“If I had I should not have endangered my oath by seeing Madame de Roux pass from her carriage and walk up the steps leading to the vestibule.”
“You were not in the streets of Paris alone, and on foot, at night?”
She answered simply, looking directly at him:
“I was in the Paris streets that evening, on foot, certainly, but not alone. Sister Saint Bernard was with me.”