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Updated: June 15, 2025
"It is a letter," an unknown voice replied. "A letter! From whom?" "From a physician." "What physician?" "I do not know; it is about some accident." Hesitating no more, she opened the door, and found herself facing a cab-driver in an oilskin cap. He held a paper in his hand, which he presented to her. She read: "Very urgent Monsieur le Comte de Guilleroy." The writing was unknown.
Her close-fitting black gown made her look very slender and gave her a youthful appearance though a grave air, which was belied, however, by her smiling face, lighted up by her bright golden hair. The Count entered, leading by the hand a little six-year-old girl. Madame de Guilleroy presented him, saying, "My husband."
But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that, she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of embonpoint, over which she soon triumphed. "Tell us how you did it," demanded Madame de Guilleroy. The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women of the day.
Madame de Guilleroy had given her in the country two governesses, with unexceptionable diplomas, and had visited her mother and her daughter more frequently than before. Moreover, Annette's sojourn at the castle was rendered almost necessary by the presence of the old lady.
He leaned over, kissed the foot, which appeared to float between the skirt and the rug, and which, a little chilled by the air, no longer moved restlessly about; then he slipped on the shoe, and Madame de Guilleroy, rising, approached the table, on which were scattered papers, open letters, old and recent, beside a painter's inkstand, in which the ink had dried.
When he received this letter announcing the still delayed return, Olivier was seized with an immoderate desire to take a carriage for the railway station to catch a train for Roncieres; then, thinking that M. de Guilleroy must return the next day, he resigned himself, and even began to wish for the arrival of the husband with almost as much impatience as if it were that of the wife herself.
He had written on them in pencil, respectively, the names of the Countess, the Duchess, and Annette. "Is he ill, your friend Bertin?" the Duchess inquired. "I thought he looked rather bad last night." "Yes, I am a little anxious about him, although he does not complain," Madame de Guilleroy answered. "Oh, he is growing old, like all the rest of us," her husband interposed.
When Madame de Guilleroy, as the bride of a month, had entered society, she was presented to the Duchesse de Mortemain, who loved her immediately, adopted her, and patronized her. For twenty years this friendship never had diminished, and when the Duchess said, "Ma petite," one still heard in her voice the tenderness of that sudden and persistent affection.
If anyone had convinced me that it would indeed come to pass, I should have thought instantly of the terrible remorse that would fill my heart to-day." Monsieur de Guilleroy went out after dinner, as he did almost every evening. Then the Countess took her little daughter on her lap, weeping over her and kissing her; the tears she shed were sincere, coming from her conscience, not from her heart.
"He needs only rest and quiet. Madame de Guilleroy will see that he does not talk, and will speak to him as little as possible." The Countess was startled, and said: "Then I must not talk to him?" "Oh, no, Madame! Take an armchair and sit beside him. He will not feel that he is alone and will be quite content; but no fatigue of words, or even of thoughts.
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