On this occasion above all, when Sidonie arrived at Savigny after her long absence, with her fluffy hair, her graceful figure, her bright, mobile face, the whole effect emphasized by mannerisms suggestive of the shop-girl, she produced a decided sensation.  Old Gardinois, wondering greatly to see a tall young woman in place of the child he was expecting to see, considered her prettier and, above all, better dressed than Claire.

It was a fact that, when Mademoiselle Chebe had left the train and was seated in the great wagonette from the chateau, her appearance was not bad; but she lacked those details that constituted her friend’s chief beauty and charm—­a distinguished carriage, a contempt for poses, and, more than all else, mental tranquillity.  Her prettiness was not unlike her gowns, of inexpensive materials, but cut according to the style of the day-rags, if you will, but rags of which fashion, that ridiculous but charming fairy, had regulated the color, the trimming, and the shape.  Paris has pretty faces made expressly for costumes of that sort, very easy to dress becomingly, for the very reason that they belong to no type, and Mademoiselle Sidonie’s face was one of these.

What bliss was hers when the carriage entered the long avenue, bordered with velvety grass and primeval elms, and at the end Savigny awaiting her with its great gate wide open!

And how thoroughly at ease she felt amid all those refinements of wealth!  How perfectly that sort of life suited her!  It seemed to her that she never had known any other.

Suddenly, in the midst of her intoxication, arrived a letter from Frantz, which brought her back to the realities of her life, to her wretched fate as the future wife of a government clerk, which transported her, whether she would or no, to the mean little apartment they would occupy some day at the top of some dismal house, whose heavy atmosphere, dense with privation, she seemed already to breathe.

Should she break her betrothal promise?

She certainly could do it, as she had given no other pledge than her word.  But when he had left her, who could say that she would not wish him back?

In that little brain, turned by ambition, the strangest ideas chased one another.  Sometimes, while Grandfather Gardinois, who had laid aside in her honor his old-fashioned hunting-jackets and swanskin waistcoats, was jesting with her, amusing himself by contradicting her in order to draw out a sharp reply, she would gaze steadily, coldly into his eyes, without replying.  Ah! if only he were ten years younger!  But the thought of becoming Madame Gardinois did not long occupy her.  A new personage, a new hope came into her life.

After Sidonie’s arrival, Georges Fromont, who was seldom seen at Savigny except on Sundays, adopted the habit of coming to dinner almost every day.

He was a tall, slender, pale youth, of refined appearance.  Having no father or mother, he had been brought up by his uncle, M. Fromont, and was looked upon by him to succeed him in business, and probably to become Claire’s husband.  That ready-made future did not arouse any enthusiasm in Georges.  In the first place business bored him.  As for his cousin, the intimate good-fellowship of an education in common and mutual confidence existed between them, but nothing more, at least on his side.