Cousin Betty | Page 5

who bore it, a tall, fair woman, evidently young-looking for her age,
rose as if she had received an electric shock.
"Hortense, my darling, go into the garden with your Cousin Betty," she
said hastily to her daughter, who was working at some embroidery at

her mother's side.
After curtseying prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went
out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who
looked older than the Baroness, though she was five years younger.
"They are settling your marriage," said Cousin Betty in the girl's ear,
without seeming at all offended at the way in which the Baroness had
dismissed them, counting her almost as zero.
The cousin's dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy
demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of
which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a
little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw
hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-
clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made,
it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have hesitated
to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she looked
exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave the
room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel, to
which that gentleman responded by a look of mutual understanding.
"You are coming to us to-morrow, I hope, Mademoiselle Fischer?" said
he.
"You have no company?" asked Cousin Betty.
"My children and yourself, no one else," replied the visitor.
"Very well," replied she; "depend on me."
"And here am I, madame, at your orders," said the citizen-captain,
bowing again to Madame Hulot.
He gave such a look at Madame Hulot as Tartuffe casts at
Elmire--when a provincial actor plays the part and thinks it necessary to
emphasize its meaning--at Poitiers, or at Coutances.

"If you will come into this room with me, we shall be more
conveniently placed for talking business than we are in this room," said
Madame Hulot, going to an adjoining room, which, as the apartment
was arranged, served as a cardroom.
It was divided by a slight partition from a boudoir looking out on the
garden, and Madame Hulot left her visitor to himself for a minute, for
she thought it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so
that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of
shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter
and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the
end of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open,
so as to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come
in.
As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face
to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would
have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back
from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom,
her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every
woman, even the most candid, seems to have at her command.
During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National
Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself.
As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by the
sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from which
the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and the silk
seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips-- expressions of
scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession without disguise on
his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself in the glass over an
old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating the general effect,
when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the Baroness. He at once
struck at attitude.
After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in
the year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms
ending in bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the
wood, which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be

seated.
"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of
promise to a----"
"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.
"The word is too feeble," said he, placing his right hand on his heart,
and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman
laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A lover? Say
a man bewitched----"
"Listen, Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness, too anxious to be able to
laugh,