He had said to Dormer that he rather anticipated being received in the midst of a family gathering, since he was known to the Marquis as well, and since Armand was indeed no little in his debt. He was pleased to find that this was not the case. The lackey led them up the stairs to Horatia's boudoir. Madame la Comtesse (how unfamiliar!) was expecting them.
At first sight, as Horatia rose to greet them, Tristram thought, "Yes, she has been ill, she looks a woman, but she is the same." She had for a moment all her old vivacity, her delightful smile, the same trick of screwing her eyes up when she talked. She gave him just the welcome that he might have had in Berkshire. He was even able to remember, as she held out her hand to Dormer, all the hits she used to aim at his friend.
"I hope you are quite recovered from your accident, Mr. Dormer," she said. "You must not stand a moment, I am sure. Let us all sit down, and we can gossip comfortably."
She waved them into chairs. The voice, the words, were just Horatia's own; the air a little more assured, more mature--that of Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon. No harm in that.
She talked on lightly. Papa, she was certain, had been alarming Tristram unnecessarily; she was as well as ever she had been in her life. And why had not Tristram given her an address?--could they not come and stay at the Hôtel now? Presently they must see her son, and Armand would soon be in.
And as she talked the sense of effort began to be apparent, the glow, the first illusion faded. She was not the same Horatia; she was not even the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon, an Horatia ripened by her station, she was somehow different. She had not the same vitality. This was what her illness had done to her, thought Tristram--drained away some of that almost childish and petulant animation which he used to love in her. Spring had left those green boughs, perhaps not to revisit them. He was sad; and sat a little silent while she talked, without telling them much, about Armand, about this, that, and the other, about her own pleasure in seeing them, ending at last by saying, "Perhaps we had better be going now into the salon."
So they followed her to that apartment where, throned in state on a sofa, out of deference to the English prejudice against being received in a bedroom, sat the Duchesse--and Tristram was momentarily startled to perceive that her hair, as he innocently supposed it to be, was of almost the same shade as Horatia's. Beside her, talking with great animation, was a young and fashionably dressed woman, the Marquise de Beaulieu. His old acquaintance Emmanuel was standing by these two, and in a window a tall ecclesiastic whom he did not know was conversing with a shrivelled little old lady equally unknown to him.