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"It was so sudden!" sobbed Lescande, brokenly. "It seems like a dream a frightful dream! You know the last time you visited us she was not well. You remember I told you she had wept all day. Poor child! The morning of my return she was seized with congestion of the lungs of the brain I don't know! but she is dead! And so good! so gentle, so loving! to the last moment! Oh, my friend! my friend!
Lescande stepped into his carriage and departed, after receiving from his wife an embrace more fervent than usual. The dinner was gay. In the atmosphere was that subtle suggestion of coming danger of which both Camors and Madame Lescande felt the exhilarating influence.
"Good heavens! my friend," laughed Lescande, "and that suffices you for happiness?" "That and the principles of 'eighty-nine," replied Camors, lighting a fresh cigar from the old one. Here their dialogue was broken by the fresh voice of a woman calling from the blinds of the balcony "Is that you, Theodore?"
When he called upon her two or three days after as was only his duty Camors reflected on a strong resolution he had made to keep very cool, and to expatiate to Madame Lescande only on her husband's virtues.
Notwithstanding Camors's unwillingness, Lescande detained him until he had extorted a promise to come and dine with them that is, with him, his wife, and his mother-in-law, Madame Mursois on the following Tuesday. This acceptance left a cloud on the spirit of Camors until the appointed day. Besides abhorring family dinners, he objected to being reminded of the scene of the balcony.
Notwithstanding Camors's unwillingness, Lescande detained him until he had extorted a promise to come and dine with them that is, with him, his wife, and his mother-in-law, Madame Mursois on the following Tuesday. This acceptance left a cloud on the spirit of Camors until the appointed day. Besides abhorring family dinners, he objected to being reminded of the scene of the balcony.
Furthermore, if any of his constituents, passing through Paris, presented themselves at his small hotel on the Rue de l'Imperatrice it had been built by an architect named Lescande, as a compliment from the deputy to his old friend they were received with a winning affability that sent them back to the province with softened hearts.
Eight days after his father's death, he was reclining on the lounge in his smoking-room, his face dark as night and as his thoughts, when a servant entered and handed him a card. He took it listlessly, and read "Lescande, architect." Two red spots rose to his pale cheeks "I do not see any one," he said.
But in all these interviews he held toward Madame Lescande the language and manner of a brother: perhaps because he secretly persisted in his delicate resolve; perhaps because he was not ignorant that every road leads to Rome and one as surely as another.
So he was not in the most agreeable frame of mind when he stepped out of his dog-cart, that Tuesday evening, before the little villa of the Avenue Maillot. At his reception by Madame Lescande and her mother he took heart a little. They appeared to him what they were, two honest-hearted women, surrounded by luxury and elegance.
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