while a bodice thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a coat of mail.  People’s eyes kept following another lady smilingly, so singularly marked were her clinging skirts.  All the luxuriant splendor of the departing winter was there—­the overtolerant world of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of enjoyment.  The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms the quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.

“Very smart—­the countess!” La Faloise continued at the garden door.  “She’s ten years younger than her daughter.  By the by, Foucarmont, you must decide on a point.  Vandeuvres once bet that she had no thighs.”

This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and Foucarmont contented himself by saying: 

“Ask your cousin, dear boy.  Here he is.”

“Jove, it’s a happy thought!” cried La Faloise.  “I bet ten louis she has thighs.”

Fauchery did indeed come up.  As became a constant inmate of the house, he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the crowded doors.  Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the winter, and he was now dividing himself between the singer and the countess, but he was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get rid of one of them.  Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused him more than she.  Besides, the passion Rose felt was a real one:  her tenderness for him was marked by a conjugal fidelity which drove Mignon to despair.

“Listen, we want some information,” said La Faloise as he squeezed his cousin’s arm.  “You see that lady in white silk?”

Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge to satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery, dating from the days when he was just fresh from his native province.

“Yes, that lady with the lace.”

The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.

“The countess?” he said at last.

“Exactly, my good friend.  I’ve bet ten louis—­now, has she thighs?”

And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in snubbing a fellow who had once come heavily down on him for asking whether the countess slept with anyone.  But Fauchery, without showing the very slightest astonishment, looked fixedly at him.

“Get along, you idiot!” he said finally as he shrugged his shoulders.