The chevalier opened a door at one end of the room and closed it after him; but, as I could hear him cough from time to time, I gathered that his study was separated from his daughter’s room only by a wooden partition.  Still, it was bliss to be alone with her for a few moments, as long as she appeared to be asleep.  She did not see me, and I could gaze on her at will.  So pale was she that she seemed as white as her muslin dressing-gown, or as her satin slippers with their trimming of swan’s down.  Her delicate, transparent hand was to my eyes like some unknown jewel.  Never before had I realized what a woman was; beauty for me had hitherto meant youth and health, together with a sort of manly hardihood.  Edmee, in her riding-habit, as I first beheld her, had in a measure displayed such beauty, and I had understood her better then.  Now, as I studied her afresh, my very ideas, which were beginning to get a little light from without, all helped to make this second tete-a-tete very different from the first.

But the strange, uneasy pleasure I experienced in gazing on her was disturbed by the arrival of a duenna, a certain Mademoiselle Leblanc, who performed the duties of lady’s maid in Edmee’s private apartments, and filled the post of companion in the drawing-room.  Perhaps she had received orders from her mistress not to leave us.  Certain it is that she took her place by the side of the invalid’s chair in such a way as to present to my disappointed gaze her own long, meagre back, instead of Edmee’s beautiful face.  Then she took some work out of her pocket, and quietly began to knit.  Meanwhile the birds continued to warble, the chevalier to cough, Edmee to sleep or to pretend to sleep, while I remained at the other end of the room with my head bent over the prints in a book that I was holding upside down.

After some time I became aware that Edmee was not asleep, and that she was talking to her attendant in a low voice.  I fancied I noticed the latter glancing at me from time to time out of the corner of her eye in a somewhat stealthy manner.  To escape the ordeal of such an examination, and also from an impulse of cunning, which was by no means foreign to my nature, I let my head fall on the book, and the book on the pier-table, and in this posture I remained as if buried in sleep or thought.  Then, little by little, their voices grew louder, until I could hear what they were saying about me.

“It’s all the same; you have certainly have chosen a funny sort of page, mademoiselle.”

“A page, Leblanc!  Why do you talk such nonsense?  As if one had pages nowadays!  You are always imagining we are still in my grandmother’s time.  I tell you he is my father’s adopted son.”

“M. le Chevalier is undoubtedly quite right to adopt a son; but where on earth did he fish up such a creature as that?”

I gave a side glance at them and saw that Edmee was laughing behind her fan.  She was enjoying the chatter of this old maid, who was supposed to be a wag and allowed perfect freedom of speech.  I was very much hurt to see my cousin was making fun of me.