A passionate pressure of the hand and a lingering kiss on Mathilde's primrose gloves were the only reply, and they parted. The delicate odor of the primrose gloves lingered with Victor, as he sauntered homeward in the dim twilight. The earnest, almost appealing, look of Mathilde, as he parted from her, haunted him.
"Could I ever forget and be happy?" he asked of himself. The very idea seemed to him an unpardonable infidelity,—a culpable forgetfulness of past memories, which lowered him in his own estimation. At the corner of the Rue Arc en Ciel he encountered Mlle. Lisa, hanging contentedly on the arm of Ulysse. Poor François and his flowers were forgotten at that moment, and Lisa had abandoned herself to the delights of allaying a jealousy successfully roused in the heart of the gallant Ulysse by her recent tactics.
"Mon colonel," said Ulysse, "a lady has called twice to see you in your absence. The last time she waited a long while in your room, and finally left a note, which she said was important and must be handed to you at once."
"A lady! Who can it be? My venerable maiden aunt, I suppose," said Victor, shrugging his shoulders, "who has lost her vicious, snarling poodle,—a wretched brute that always bites my legs, when I dare to venture them in my aunt's snuff-colored saloon, and that I am expected to find for her now, by virtue of my name of Villefort."
"The lady is young, handsome, and in widow's weeds," said Ulysse, half in reply to his colonel's muttered soliloquy, as he ran before him and vanished into the court-yard of No. 29, in search of the note.
The twilight deepened and thickened on the silent little street. The oil lamp, hanging from the rope at the corner, was lighted, but its feeble rays only penetrated a short distance, leaving the rest wrapt in mystery and gloom, and the gate opening from the Contesse d'Hivry's garden, François' portal of happiness, through which he passed into the blissful presence of his Lisa, was scarcely discernible. The evening was clear and fine, however, the stars were beginning to glimmer in the sky, and a faint band of light in the east was growing every moment into glistening silver, under the rays of the coming moon.
After parting with Victor, Mathilde entered the salon, and, throwing herself languidly into a chair, recalled with feminine minuteness the events and conversation of the afternoon, until oppressed with the light and warmth of the house, she sought refuge in the cool air of the balcon, and, leaning on the balustrade, looked dreamily through the honeysuckle vines at the parterres and lawn beyond. The meditations of the countess, however, were not exclusively romantic, in spite of the languid grace of her attitude, and the poetic abstraction of her gaze. She was fortifying herself against an attack of imprudent tenderness, by sternly picturing to herself all the practical disadvantages of a marriage of inclination. Could she incur the lasting displeasure of her aunt and uncle by marrying any one save her cousin Armand? Could she sacrifice the half of her fortune, which was the penalty of such a caprice of the heart, and sink into comparative poverty? The souvenir of a single phrase, however, in the tender inflection of a manly voice,—"Appuyez vous bien sur moi," was ever present to her memory quickening the beatings of her heart, and bringing the warm blood to her cheeks. The moon had risen, pouring a flood of silver light over François' roses, and the pots of cactus on the garden-wall. The countess strolled into the garden, and, fancying that she heard a whispered conversation proceeding from the little gate leading into the Rue Arc en Ciel, she turned her footsteps in that direction.
"Is that you, Lisa?" asked the countess, rightly suspecting that the muslin dress, fluttering in the moonlight, could belong to none other than the daughter of the worthy Mme. Ledru, and that she was about to surprise a tête-à-tête between the coquettish Lisa, and her gardener, the enamored François.
"Yes, madame," said Lisa, "can I be of any service?"