The baroness moved forward on the arm of the doctor, who had rushed to meet her, and appeared, despite all his control of his facial muscles, a little ill at ease and discomfited.  He had thought, the good Jenkins, to profit by the opportunity afforded by this evening party to bring about a reconciliation between his friend Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, who were his two most wealthy clients and embarrassed him greatly with their intestine feud.  The Nabob was perfectly willing.  He bore his old chum no grudge.  Their quarrel had arisen out of Hemerlingue’s marriage with one of the favourites of the last Bey.  “A story with a woman at the bottom of it, in short,” said Jansoulet, and a story which he would have been glad to see come to an end, since his exuberant nature found every antipathy oppressive.  But it seemed that the baron was not anxious for any settlement of their differences; for, notwithstanding his word passed to Jenkins, his wife arrived alone, to the Irishman’s great chagrin.

She was a tall, slender, frail person, with eyebrows that suggested a bird’s plumes, and a youthful intimidated manner.  She was aged about thirty but looked twenty, and wore a head-dress of grasses and ears of corn drooping over very black hair peppered with diamonds.  With her long lashes against cheeks white with that transparency of complexion which characterizes women who have long led a cloistered existence, and a little ill at ease in her Parisian clothes, she resembled less one who had formerly been a woman of the harem than a nun who, having renounced her vows, was returning into the world.

An air of piety, of extreme devoutness, in her bearing, a certain ecclesiastical trick of walking with downcast eyes, elbows close to the body, hands crossed, mannerisms which she had acquired in the very religious atmosphere in which she had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed this resemblance.  And you can imagine with what ardent curiosity that worldly assembly regarded this quondam odalisk turned fervent Catholic, as she advanced escorted by a man with a livid countenance like that of some spectacled sacristan, Maitre le Merquier, deputy of Lyons, Hemerlingue’s man of business, who accompanied the baroness whenever the baron “was somewhat indisposed,” as on this evening.

At their entry into the second drawing-room, the Nabob came straight up to her, expecting to see appear in her wake the puffy face of his old comrade to whom it was agreed that he should go and offer his hand.  The baroness perceived him and became still whiter.  A flash as of steel shot from beneath her long lashes.  Her nostrils dilated, quivered, and, as Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her step, carrying her head high and erect, and letting fall from her thin lips an Arab word which no one else could understand but of which the Nabob himself well appreciated the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace.  He stood for an instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with anger.  Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together with preoccupied air.