Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim
of love's marches and countermarches.
"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently
as she could, when the man came back to report himself.
"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was
all right."
Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her
heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to
utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the
countless miseries of the rich!
More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and
again, and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out
that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the
Princess and from social duties. She was only at home to her
father the Duc de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de
Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal
great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de Grandlieu.
These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess
was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected
every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride,
the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the
yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the
forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was
paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.
She went out at last to a review.
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