"Will you come tomorrow evening?" she asked."I am going to a ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock."Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais.To anyone who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she-coxcomb's boudoir.
Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low already in his happiness that to save his life he could not have told his love to one of his closest friends.Is there not always a trace of shame in the lover's bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain exultation over diminished masculine stature? Indeed, but for a host of motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first to betray the secret?--a secret of which, perhaps, they soon weary.
"Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur," said the man;"she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her here."Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in the least details.He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the objects of her choosing; they revealed her life before he could grasp her personality and ideas.About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her chamber.Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled.She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise's enquiry, "How do I look?" She was sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, "I am adorned to please you."No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam through the gleaming folds.The Duchess was dazzling.The pale blue colour of her gown, repeated in the flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue to lend substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as she glided towards Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies that hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem to mingle and blend.
"I have kept you waiting," she said, with the tone that a woman can always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to please.
"I would wait patiently through an eternity," said he, "if Iwere sure of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment to speak of your beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch you.Suffer me only to kiss your scarf.""Oh, fie!" she said, with a commanding gesture, "I esteem you enough to give you my hand."She held it out for his kiss.A woman's hand, still moist from the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul.And if a man is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm.
"Will you always give it me like this?" the General asked humbly when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to his lips.
"Yes, but there we must stop," she said, smiling.She sat down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she watched M.de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the Duchess and those repeated graceful movements of hers.
"Ah! you were punctual," she said; "that is right.I like punctuality.It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful flattery of all.Now, is it not? Just tell me."Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness through such nothings as these! Oh, the Duchess understood son metier de femme--the art and mystery of being a woman--most marvellously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly with hollow flatteries.
"You will never forget to come at nine o'clock.""No; but are you going to a ball every night?""Do I know?" she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if not capricious, and that a lover must take her as she was.--"Besides," she added, "what is that to you? You shall be my escort.""That would be difficult tonight," he objected; "I am not properly dressed.""It seems to me," she returned loftily, "that if anyone has a right to complain of your costume, it is I.Know, therefore, monsieur le voyageur, that if I accept a man's arm, he is forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to criticise him.You do not know the world, I see; I like you the better for it."And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman of fashion.
"If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a ******ton to prevent her," said Armand to himself."She has a liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot despise it more than I do.So, now for the ball if she likes."The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would hesitate to believe that he was violently in love with her.And the General was well pleased that the queen of fashion should think of compromising herself for him; hope gave him wit.He had gained confidence, he brought out his thoughts and views; he felt nothing of the restraint that weighed on his spirits yesterday.
His talk was interesting and animated, and full of those first confidences so sweet to make and to receive.
Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she devised this charming piece of coquetry? At any rate, she looked up mischievously as the clock struck twelve.