“I had been dining with my friend, the Baron, at Vez.”
“At Vez? ha! I fancy you went there mainly to console the beautiful recluse, whom the jealous Baron keeps shut up there a regular prisoner, so they say. But even that I can forgive you.”
“What, is there a blacker crime still,” said Thibault, who was beginning to feel quite reassured, seeing how quickly the pardon followed on the accusation; however serious it appeared at first.
“Yes, at the ball given by his Highness the Duke of Orleans.”
“What ball?”
“Why, the one yesterday! it’s not so very along ago, is it?”
“Oh, yesterday’s ball? I was admiring you.”
“Indeed; but I was not there.”
“Is it necessary for you to be present, Jane, for me to admire you; cannot one admire you in remembrance as truly as in person? and if, when absent, you triumph by comparison, the victory is only so much the greater.”
“I daresay, and it was in order to carry out the comparison to its utmost limits that you danced four times with Madame de Bonneuil; they are very pretty, are they not, those dark women who cover themselves with rouge, and have eyebrows like the Chinese mannikins on my screens and moustaches like a grenadier.”
“Do you know what we talked about during those four dances.”