'They were talking about you yesterday after the _déjeuner_,' she said, after her discursive gossip had embraced every subject and person then of interest to her, pecking at each one of them furtively, petulantly, as a well-fed mouse pecks at crumbs of cake. 'They were saying how beautiful you were; even mamma said that, and they all agreed that if only you were not so grave, so cold, so almost stiff, nobody would be admired more than you. But men think you do not care, so they do not care. It is true,' added Blanchette, studying the face of her cousin out of the corner of her eye, 'it is true that the Princess Napraxine, whom they are always so mad about, is just as indifferent too. But then it is another kind of indifference--hers. She is always provoking them with it, on purpose. You go through a room as if you were saying a paternoster under your breath. It is a great difference----'
'It is, no doubt, a great difference,' said Yseulte, with more bitterness than she was aware of; the idle words struck at the hidden wound within her. The difference was vast indeed between herself and the woman whom her husband loved!
Blanchette watched her sharply, herself sitting on a stool at her feet.
'Do you know,' she said, pulling the ears of Yseulte's great dog, 'that she is coming--indeed, I think, is here? I heard them say so yesterday. It seems that the Prince bought that little villa and gave it to her--La Jacquemerille--when they were here two years ago. She is very rich, you know. Her husband has left her such immense properties, and then I think she had a great deal of money all of her own, before his death, from some distant relative, who left it to her because she did not want it; it is always like that.'
Yseulte rose abruptly. Blanchette could not see her face, but she saw her left hand, which trembled.
As far as the child liked anyone, she was attached to her cousin; since her marriage Yseulte had been extremely generous and kind to her, and the selfish little heart of Blanchette had been won, as far as ever it could be won, by its affections which were only another form of selfishness. She had been unable to resist the temptation of telling her news, and saying what was unkind; and yet in her way she was compassionate.