How strangely she was tainted with something really almost _canaille_; the soft depth of her voice reeked with it. And how strangely blind must the affection of the mother be that could bridge the chasm that separated her from her daughter, unconscious--her evident devotion to her proved that--of its very existence.
MADAME and Mademoiselle Vicaud were at home on Tuesdays, and Damier felt that he would always receive a courteously cordial welcome on these formal occasions; but he felt, too, for some weeks, that the courtesy, the pleasant graciousness of his reception, did not grow in warmth. He was accepted, but no more. Madame Vicaud treated him as she might have treated him had he been but one habitué of a crowded salon. Her salon was anything but crowded; he soon had numbered its habitués. There was a monotony about these Tuesday reunions; they were rather thin and colorless; thin only in quantity, not in quality, for that was excellent--reminded him of Madame Vicaud's black silk dresses with their white lawn cuffs and collars, a quality worn but irreproachable. Damier came to find a flavor, an unusualness, in the cool cheerfulness of the Tuesday teas.
The salon in the Rue B---- on these occasions had some vases of flowers, and the tea, brought in by the monastic Angélique, boasted bread and butter and _madeleines_ as well as the daily _petits beurres_ that Damier had been offered on a more informal visit.
To the teas came old Madame Dépressier, who was of an impoverished Huguenot family, and who spent her time in works of charity, a serene woman with a large white face--a woman, Damier found on talking to her, of character and learning. She and Madame Vicaud talked of books, lectures, and poor people, and smiled much together. Madame Crécy came also, dignified, middle-aged, interested in _le mouvement féministe_, a writer of essays, dark, decisive, a charm in her bright ugliness. There was a dim, devout, and gentle old Comtesse de Comprailles. She had known Madame Vicaud for years, from before her marriage, and her piety had lifted her above the realization of the secular troubles of her friend, and had, indeed, kept their relation a softly superficial one. With the comtesse came sometimes a tall, thin priest, her cousin, also dim, devout, and gentle in these social relations with heretics.