"Where do you think we are going now, Mademoiselle?"
Came the weary answer:
"I do not know, Madame.... First, it was to Metz, and then to Châlons. Now, it may be to Rheims, as the Emperor is there."
Adelaide returned tormentingly:
"But we are not going to Rheims."
A thrill passed through Juliette.
"My father is not a prisoner, then?"
"My faith!" said Adelaide, shrugging with ostentatious indifference. "He is as he was yesterday. But all the same, my little one, we do not go to Rheims, but to Rethel.... Tell me—you have brought with you a walking-costume that is tolerable? Something more becoming than this lugubrious garment you have on!"
Juliette replied in the negative. Adelaide's look was coldly scornful as she scrutinized the little figure before her. Could this really be her daughter, this pale, peaked, elfish thing?...
What sloping shoulders, what tragic, haunted eyes, what a long upper lip, what lack of vivacity and elegance.... Her grandmother—that well-loathed woman, lived again in de Bayard's child.