Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine’s faithful attendant in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat.  Whenever they went to the end of the park he carried her campstool and her sunshade.  Besides, he amused her with the original witticisms peculiar to a second-rate journalist, and in so doing he prompted her to one of those sudden intimacies which are allowable in the country.  She had apparently consented to it from the first, for she had grown quite a girl again in the society of a young man whose noisy humor seemed unlikely to compromise her.  But now and again, when for a second or two they found themselves alone behind the shrubs, their eyes would meet; they would pause amid their laughter, grow suddenly serious and view one another darkly, as though they had fathomed and divined their inmost hearts.

On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time.  M. Theophile Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats’ last winter, had just arrived.  He sat stooping humbly forward and behaved with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor did he seem to notice the anxious deference with which he was treated.  When he had succeeded in getting the company to forget his presence he sat nibbling small lumps of sugar during dessert, looking sharply up at Daguenet as the latter handed Estelle strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who was making the countess very merry over one of his anecdotes.  Whenever anyone looked at him he smiled in his quiet way.  When the guests rose from table he took the count’s arm and drew him into the park.  He was known to have exercised great influence over the latter ever since the death of his mother.  Indeed, singular stories were told about the kind of dominion which the ex-lawyer enjoyed in that household.  Fauchery, whom his arrival doubtless embarrassed, began explaining to Georges and Daguenet the origin of the man’s wealth.  It was a big lawsuit with the management of which the Jesuits had entrusted him in days gone by.  In his opinion the worthy man was a terrible fellow despite his gentle, plump face and at this time of day had his finger in all the intrigues of the priesthood.  The two young men had begun joking at this, for they thought the little old gentleman had an idiotic expression.  The idea of an unknown Venot, a gigantic Venot, acting for the whole body of the clergy, struck them in the light of a comical invention.  But they were silenced when, still leaning on the old man’s arm, Count Muffat reappeared with blanched cheeks and eyes reddened as if by recent weeping.

“I bet they’ve been chatting about hell,” muttered Fauchery in a bantering tone.

The Countess Sabine overheard the remark.  She turned her head slowly, and their eyes met in that long gaze with which they were accustomed to sound one another prudently before venturing once for all.