Clemence lowered her own beautiful eyes and made no reply.

“His friend, Monsieur Marillac, does not frighten me one bit, in spite of his big moustache.  Tell me, does not this Monsieur de Gerfaut frighten you a little too?”

“Not at all, I assure you,” replied Madame de Bergenheim, trying to smile.  “But,” she continued, in order to change the conversation, “how fine you look!  You have certainly some plan of conquest.  What! a city gown at nine o’clock in the morning, and hair dressed as if for a ball?”

“Would you like to know the compliment your aunt just paid me?”

“Some little jest of hers, I suppose?”

“You might say some spiteful remark, for she is the hatefulest thing!  She told me that blue ribbons suited red hair very badly and advised me to change one or the other.  Is it true that my hair is red?”

Mademoiselle de Bergenheim asked this question with so much anxiety that her sister-in-law could not repress a smile.

“You know that my aunt delights in annoying you,” said she.  “Your hair is very pretty, a bright blond, very pleasant to the eye; only Justine waves it a little too tight; it curls naturally.  She dresses your hair too high; it would be more becoming to you if she pushed it back from your temples a little than to wave it as much as she does.  Come a little nearer to me.”

Aline knelt before Madame de Bergenheim’s bed, and the latter, adding a practical lesson to verbal advice, began to modify the maid’s work to suit her own taste.

“It curls like a little mane,” said the young girl, as she saw the trouble her sister-in-law had in succeeding; “it was my great trouble at the Sacred Heart.  The sisters wished us to wear our hair plain, and I always had a terrible time to keep it in place.  However, blond hair looks ugly when too plainly dressed, and Monsieur de Gerfaut said yesterday that it was the shade he liked best.”

“Monsieur de Gerfaut told you he liked blond hair best!”

“Take care; you are pulling my hair!  Yes, blond hair and blue eyes.  He said that when speaking of Carlo Dolci’s Virgin, and he said she was of the most beautiful Jewish type; if he intended it as a compliment to me, I am very much obliged to him.  Do you think that my eyes are as blue as that of the painted Virgin’s.  Monsieur de Gerfaut pretends that there is a strong resemblance.”

Madame de Bergenheim withdrew her hand so quickly that she pulled out half a dozen or more hairs from her sister-in-law’s head, and buried herself up to the chin in the bedclothes.

“Oh!  Monsieur de Gerfaut knows how to pay very pretty compliments!” she said.  “And you doubtless are very well pleased to resemble Carlo Dolci’s Madonna?”

“She is very pretty!—­and then it is the Holy Virgin, you know—­Ah!  I hear Monsieur de Gerfaut’s voice in the garden.”

The young girl arose quickly and ran to the window, where, concealed behind the curtains, she could see what was going on outside without being seen herself.