"Ah!" M. Flandre said, with the air of one still a little doubtful. "And Madame wears the cockade for that reason?"
"No, M. le Maire," she answered, with a roguish smile; I saw that it was her plan to humour him. "I do not--my daughter does. If you wish to ask further, or the reason, you must ask her."
M. Flandre had the curiosity of the true bourgeois, and the love of the sex. He simpered. "If Mademoiselle would be so good," he said.
Denise had remained up to this point hidden behind her mother, but at the word she crept out, and reluctantly and like a prisoner brought to the bar, stood before us. It was only when she spoke, however, nay, it was not until she had spoken some words that I understood the full change that I saw in her; or why, instead of the picture of pallid weariness which she had presented a few minutes before, she now showed, as she stood forward, a face covered with blushes, and eyes shining and suffused.
"It is simple, Monsieur," she said in a low voice. "My fiancé, M. le Maire, is in that regiment."
"And you wear it for that reason?" the Mayor cried, delighted.
"I love him," she said softly. And for a moment--for a moment her eyes met mine.
Then I know not which was the redder, she or I; or which found that vile and filthy room more like a palace, its tobacco-laden air more sweet! I had not dreamed what she was going to say, least of all had I dreamed what her eyes said, as for that instant they met mine and turned my blood to fire! I lost the Mayor's blunt answer and his chuckling laugh; and only returned to a sense of the present when Mademoiselle slipped back to hide her burning face behind her mother, and I saw in her place Madame, facing me, with her finger to her lip, and a glance of warning in her eyes.
It was a warning not superfluous, for in the flush of my first enthusiasm I might have said anything. And the Mayor was in better hands than mine. The little touch of romance and sentiment which Mademoiselle's avowal had imported into the matter, had removed his last suspicion and won his heart. He ogled Madame, he beamed on the girl with fatherly gallantry. He made a jest of the monk.
"A mistake, and yet one I cannot deplore, Madame," he protested, with clumsy civility. "For it has given me the pleasure of seeing you."