She broke down and sobbed, and the sympathetic Adelaide administered red lavender on sugar, while her maid kept guard on the landing to intercept Madame Tessier should she appear. The cock-and-bull story told the girl would hardly have borne the test of recital before a third person. But Juliette was young, and innocent and unsuspecting, and Adelaide was experienced in the ways of the world, and very old in guile....
"Courage, my child, and above all, have faith in Heaven!" It did not at all suit her voluptuous type, the heroic-pious tone.... "Naturally you will, knowing M. le Colonel a prisoner, leave nothing undone to assuage the miseries of his situation!... Have I guessed right? I venture to think I have!" She patted Juliette's hand and smiled in the drowned blue eyes, from which she gently drew the little soaked handkerchief. "Accompanied by your venerable protectress, you will instantly return to France. You will leave no stone unturned to obtain an interview with the Emperor—you will implore him on your knees to obtain M. le Colonel's exchange.... Presto! the Emperor will set the machinery in motion. He will give back three Officers to the King of Prussia—and Mademoiselle will have her father again! Is it not so, tell me, my little one?"
She held the girl's small hands in hers, and as she marked off each item of her program, she gently clapped the hands together, as in approval or consent. It was a characteristic trick with Adelaide when she meant to be playfully coaxing, and there was imprudence in employing it now. But with the first inchoate stirring of memory in Juliette, caution reawakened in Madame de Bayard. She released the hands, and said in a graver tone:
"Your gouvernante will not object to return?"
Juliette responded:
"Dear Madame, that lady is not my instructress. She is the excellent Madame Tessier, my grandmother's oldest friend."
Adelaide's lip wore the expression of one who sniffs at physic. Had she not been deafened with the recounted virtues of this very Madame Tessier! As she racked her memory for the date of a possible meeting, Juliette continued:
"She is very kind to me. But I fear she will not consent to return to France immediately. She is now upon her way to Mons-sur-Trouille to attend the wedding of her only son. All has been arranged. It is to take place upon the 22d."
A sigh heaved her breast, and her eyelids sank under the burning gaze of Adelaide. But Adelaide was still engaged with Madame Tessier:
"If she has seen me once—and it may well be once!—she certainly has forgotten me!" she commented mentally. Aloud she said: