Yet there was trouble in his look. He asked me if I had seen Victor.
"Yesterday," I said, understanding him perfectly, and what was amiss. "Not to-day."
"Nor Denise?"
"No. I have not had the honour of seeing Mademoiselle."
"Then, come," he answered. "My mother expected you earlier. What did you think of Victor?"
"That he went Victor, and has returned a great personage!" I said, smiling.
Louis laughed faintly, and lifted his eyebrows with a comical air of sufferance.
"I was afraid so," he said. "He did not seem to be very well pleased with you. But we must all do his bidding--eh, Monsieur? And, in the meantime, come. My mother and Denise are in the farthest room."
He led the way thither as he spoke; but we had first to go through the card-room, and then the crowd about the farther doorway was so dense that we could not immediately enter; and so I had time--while outwardly smiling and bowing--to feel a little suspense. At last we slipped through and entered a smaller room, where were only Madame la Marquise--who was standing in the middle of the floor talking with the Abbé Mesnil--two or three ladies, and Denise de St. Alais.
Mademoiselle had her seat on a couch by one of the ladies; and naturally my eyes went first to her. She was dressed in white, and it struck me with the force of a blow how small, how childish she was! Very fair, of the purest complexion, and perfectly formed, she seemed to derive an extravagant, an absurd, air of dignity from the formality of her dress, from the height of the powdered hair that strained upwards from her forehead, from the stiffness of her brocaded petticoat. But she was very small. I had time to note this, to feel a little disappointment, and to fancy that, cast in a larger mould, she would have been supremely handsome; and then the lady beside her, seeing me, spoke to her, and the child--she was really little more--looked up, her face grown crimson. Our eyes met--thank God! she had Louis' eyes--and she looked down again, blushing painfully.