All the heads again turned towards the window. Madame Dambreville kindly made herself useful, by going and pulling the curtain aside. And the whole drawing-room beheld Auguste looking very confused and Berthe very red, still leaning against the bar of the window.
“What is the matter, my treasure?” asked Madame Josserand earnestly.
“Nothing, mamma. Monsieur Auguste knocked my arm with the window. I was so warm!”
She turned redder still. There were, affected smiles and scandalized pouts. Madame Duveyrier, who, for a month past, had been trying to keep her brother out of Berthe’s way, turned quite pale, more especially as the incident had spoilt the effect of her chorus. However, after the first moment of surprise, the applause burst forth, she was congratulated, and some amiable things were said about the gentlemen. How delightfully they had sung! what pains she must have taken to get them to sing so well in time! Really, it could not have been rendered better at a theatre. But, beneath all this praise, she could not fail to hear the whispering which went round the drawing-room: the young girl was too much compromised, a marriage had become inevitable.
“Well! he is hooked!” observed Trublot as he rejoined Octave. “What a ninny! as though he could not have pinched her whilst we were all bellowing! I thought all the while that he was taking advantage of it. You know, in drawing-rooms where they go in for singing, one pinches a lady, and if she cries out it does not matter, no one hears!”
Berthe, now very calm, was again laughing, whilst Hortense looked at Auguste with her crabbed air of a girl who had taken a diploma; and, in their triumph, the mother’s lessons reappeared, the undisguised contempt for man. All the gentlemen had now invaded the drawing-room, mingling with the ladies, and raising their voices. Monsieur Josserand, feeling sick at heart through Berthe’s adventure, had drawn near his wife. He listened uneasily as she thanked Madame Dambreville for all her kindness to their son Léon, whom she had most decidedly changed to his advantage. But his uneasiness increased when he heard her again refer to her daughters. She pretended to converse in low tones with Madame Juzeur, though speaking all the while for Valérie and Clotilde, who were standing up close beside her.