As she drawled out these words she kept her eyes on Helene, whose superb beauty amazed and delighted her.  Never had she seen a woman with so queenly an air in the black garments which draped the widow’s commanding figure.  Her admiration found vent in an involuntary smile, while she exchanged glances with Mademoiselle Aurelie.  Their admiration was so ingenuously and charmingly expressed, that a faint smile also rippled over Helene’s face.

Then Madame Deberle stretched herself on the sofa.  “You were not at the first night at the Vaudeville yesterday, madame?” she asked, as she played with the fan that hung from her waist.

“I never go to the theatre,” was Helene’s reply.

“Oh! little Noemi was simply marvellous!  Her death scene is so realistic!  She clutches her bosom like this, throws back her head, and her face turns green.  Oh! the effect is prodigious.”

Thereupon she entered into a minute criticism of the actress’s playing, which she upheld against the world; and then she passed to the other topics of the day—­a fine art exhibition, at which she had seen some most remarkable paintings; a stupid novel about which too much fuss was being made; a society intrigue which she spoke of to Mademoiselle Aurelie in veiled language.  And so she went on from one subject to another, without wearying, her tongue ever ready, as though this social atmosphere were peculiarly her own.  Helene, a stranger to such society, was content to listen, merely interjecting a remark or brief reply every now and then.

At last the door was again thrown open and the footman announced:  “Madame de Chermette!  Madame Tissot!”

Two ladies entered, magnificently dressed.  Madame Deberle rose eagerly to meet them, and the train of her black silk gown, heavily decked with trimmings, trailed so far behind her that she had to kick it out of her way whenever she happened to turn round.  A confused babel of greetings in shrill voices arose.

“Oh! how kind of you!  I declare I never see you!”

“You know we come about that lottery.”

“Yes:  I know, I know.”

“Oh! we cannot sit down.  We have to call at twenty houses yet.”

“Come now, you are not going to run away at once!”

And then the visitors finished by sitting down on the edge of a couch; the chatter beginning again, shriller than ever.

“Well! what do you think of yesterday at the Vaudeville?”

“Oh! it was splendid!”

“You know she unfastens her dress and lets down her hair.  All the effect springs from that.”

“People say that she swallows something to make her green.”

“No, no, every action is premeditated; but she had to invent and study them all, in the first place.”

“It’s wonderful.”

The two ladies rose and made their exit, and the room regained its tranquil peacefulness.  From some hyacinths on the mantel-shelf was wafted an all-pervading perfume.  For a time one could hear the noisy twittering of some sparrows quarrelling on the lawn.  Before resuming her seat, Madame Deberle proceeded to draw down the embroidered tulle blind of a window facing her, and then returned to her sofa in the mellowed, golden light of the room.