“Good gracious! what a character for any girl to give her brother. She had a motive in it, my dear—depend upon it she had a motive. She wanted to stand in your way, to prevent the marriage. I always thought she was a sly minx; they all are, those French girls, though they look as if butter would not melt in their mouths.”
Pearl was going to enter an indignant protest against this attack on her friend, but she was prevented by the arrival of visitors. Mme. de Kerbec and Mme. Léopold entered together.
Pearl started up from her seat of honor on the sofa beside Mrs. Monteagle, and as Mme. Léopold came forward, profusely affectionate, to embrace her, she blushed scarlet.
“Chère petite!” said the fond mother, playfully stroking the warm red cheek, of which Pearl for very rage with herself could have scratched the skin off. It was tantamount to confessing herself in love with Léon to blush up and look so confused the moment his mother appeared. Mme. Léopold and Mrs. Monteagle evidently thought so, too, for they laughed significantly at one another as they shook hands and glanced at Pearl.
Mme. de Kerbec wondered what the little joke was about. She was not in the intimacy of Mme. Léopold, because, as she put it, the deputy and his wife were not de notre monde. They were of the court set, and Mme. de Kerbec was of the faubourg; so, at least, she said, and as nobody of the other set had the entrée of the faubourg, nobody contradicted her.
“How is every one chez vous, mon enfant—your dear mother and your excellent father? I suppose we shall meet him with you both to-morrow evening?” said Mme. Léopold.
“I hope so, madame; but papa is not very well....” Pearl began to explain.
“No; and very likely he will ask you to—” interrupted Mrs. Monteagle; but Pearl made such imploring eyes at her and gave her hand such a terrible squeeze that the old lady did not finish the sentence, but turned off the subject by exclaiming on the splendor of Mme. de Kerbec’s dress.
“You talk of the extravagance of the Tuileries set; but if we are to judge your old faubourg by you, countess, you are a great deal worse. Good gracious! what a superb costume, to be sure. In my young days one never saw such things, except it might be at court; and even there, poor old Queen Charlotte and Queen Adelaide never were much to speak of in the way of elegance; and as to the people here at the Tuileries in those days—”
When Mrs. Monteagle was thus fairly embarked Pearl seized the opportunity to slip away.