“Here comes Jeanne,” exclaimed Madame Deberle, all at once.  “Oh, she is lovely!”

A murmur ran round the room; heads were bent forward, and every one gave vent to exclamations of admiration.  Jeanne was standing on the threshold of the outer room, awaiting her mother, who was taking off her cloak in the hall.  The child was robed in a Japanese dress of unusual splendor.  The gown, embroidered with flowers and strange-looking birds, swept to her feet, which were hidden from view; while beneath her broad waist-ribbon the flaps, drawn aside, gave a glimpse of a green petticoat, watered with yellow.  Nothing could be more strangely bewitching than her delicate features seen under the shadow of her hair, coiled above her head with long pins thrust through it, while her chin and oblique eyes, small and sparkling, pictured to the life a young lady of Yeddo, strolling amidst the perfume of tea and benzoin.  And she lingered there hesitatingly, with all the sickly languor of a tropical flower pining for the land of its birth.

Behind her, however, appeared Helene.  Both, in thus suddenly passing from the dull daylight of the street into the brilliant glare of the wax candles, blinked their eyes as though blinded, while their faces were irradiated with smiles.  The rush of warm air and the perfumes, the scent of violets rising above all else, almost stifled them, and brought a flush of red to their cheeks.  Each guest, on passing the doorway, wore a similar air of surprise and hesitancy.

“Why, Lucien! where are you?” exclaimed Madame Deberle.

The boy had not caught sight of Jeanne.  But now he rushed forward and seized her arm, forgetting to make his bow.  And they were so dainty, so loving, the little marquis in his flowered coat, and the Japanese maiden in her purple embroidered gown, that they might have been taken for two statuettes of Dresden china, daintily gilded and painted, into which life had been suddenly infused.

“You know, I was waiting for you,” whispered Lucien.  “Oh, it is so nasty to give everybody my arm!  Of course, we’ll keep beside each other, eh?”

And he sat himself down with her in the first row of chairs, wholly oblivious of his duties as host.

“Oh, I was so uneasy!” purred Juliette into Helene’s ear.  “I was beginning to fear that Jeanne had been taken ill.”

Helene proffered apology; dressing children, said she, meant endless labor.  She was still standing in a corner of the drawing-room, one of a cluster of ladies, when her heart told her that the doctor was approaching behind her.  He was making his way from behind the red curtain, beneath which he had dived to give some final instructions.  But suddenly he came to a standstill.  He, too, had divined her presence, though she had not yet turned her head.  Attired in a dress of black grenadine, she had never appeared more queenly in her beauty; and a thrill passed through him as he breathed the cool air which she had brought with her from outside, and wafted from her shoulders and arms, gleaming white under their transparent covering.