"I sometimes think that I am all three," said Madame Vicaud, after a little pause. "Misfortune's distorting mask has become in me an actuality. I am perhaps blinded; certainly, as I told you, warped and hardened. I used not to be so; it was, I suppose, latent in me: I could not bear the fiery ordeal; the good shriveled and the dross remained."
She spoke with a full gravity, no hint of plaintive self-pity, no appeal for contradiction, in her voice; yet, on raising her saddened eyes, she had to smile when she met his look.
"I see," she said, "that you are determined to take me at your own valuation, not at mine."
She turned the talk after that; she could seldom be led to talk of herself, and not until dinner was over, not until, after it, he had read to her for an hour, did she return to its subject. Then it was when he rose to go that, giving him her hand in farewell, she said:
"Bring your friend; I shall be glad to see her."
IT was as a result of this new friendship, which rapidly spread into half a dozen, that Damier, who seemed to himself to be walking among echoes of the past and whispered prophecies of the future, received yet another hint, another faint yet significant revelation, of Madame Vicaud's attitude toward her daughter.
In the more or less fluctuating social world of English Paris, the beautiful and distinguished mother and her beautiful and effective daughter struck a novel and quite resounding note,--too resounding for Madame Vicaud's taste, Damier at once felt,--a note well sustained by a harmony so decisive as Lady Surfex, Mrs. Wallingham (another new friend), and Damier himself. That Madame Vicaud disliked feeling herself a note sustained by any harmony, Damier guessed. That she mastered the dislike for his sake, he knew. He knew that she would do a great deal for his sake--a great deal for Lady Surfex, too. She and Lady Surfex liked each other absolutely. But it was through Lady Surfex, and her secret alliance with Damier, that the problem of Claire, instead of being unraveled, was the more deeply involved. Claire evidently enjoyed this new phase of life. She had now quite frequent opportunities for displaying her gowns and her voice and her dancing at receptions and balls. Yet, already, among her new entourage, she had shown her affinity with its less desirable members. A rich, fashionable, and rather tawdry Englishwoman took a great fancy to her; and Mrs. Jefferies was the sister of a fashionable and tawdry brother, Lord Epsil, who at once manifested a decided interest in the red-haired beauty, pronounced her to be like Sodoma's Judith, and made her mother's withdrawal of her from his company the more noticeable by his persistent seeking of hers.