“Poor child! But I assure you the music here is no despicable compensation. Let us go round by the left; the breeze is blowing from that point,” said Madame Beaucœur, and, without taking the slightest notice of Monsieur de Chassedot, she turned to walked on with Madame de Galliac.
“Madame!” whispered the young man, touching her lightly on the arm, and by a sign intimating that she had left him standing out in the cold.
“Oh! how stupid I am! Allow me to introduce you: le Marquis de Chassedot—la Baronne de Galliac.”
“My daughter, monsieur,” said the latter, pointing to Henriette.
Everybody having bowed to everybody, the party moved on, the young people walking in front of the married women.
Monsieur de Chassedot, serenely unconscious of the cruel snare into which he had fallen, and finding Henriette a lively, unaffected girl, talked away pleasantly, confining himself of course to authorized insipidities, such as the music, the decoration of the gardens, the weather, etc., and making himself, as he could do when he liked, very agreeable.
“Is not that Madame de P——’s voice?” said Henriette, stopping abruptly, and bending her ear in the direction of the sound.
“I think it is. Let us walk on and see,” answered her mother, and they quickened their steps.
Now, though Madame de Beaucœur liked Berthe, and as a rule was delighted to meet her anywhere, on this particular occasion she was the last person in Paris she cared to meet. She could not avoid her, however, without awakening suspicions in the mind of Edgar de Chassedot which might prove fatal to her own benevolent designs on him. When Berthe saw the party, her surprise was great, and, though she said nothing, her face expressed it so naïvely that Henriette, being intelligent, noticed it, and bethought herself that there must be some stronger reason for it than the ostensible one of her mother’s meeting and walking round the garden with Madame de Beaucœur.