This appearance
of modern splendor in the ancient hall, together with the exquisite
grace of its mistress, brought up like a true Irish lady to make and
pour out tea (that mighty affair to Englishwomen), had something
charming about them. The most exquisite luxury could never have
attained to the simple, modest, noble effect produced by this
sentiment of joyful hospitality.
A few moments after Calyste's departure from Les Touches, Beatrix, who
had heard him go, returned to Camille, whom she found with humid eyes
lying back on her sofa.
"What is it, Felicite?" asked the marquise.
"I am forty years old, and I love him!" said Mademoiselle des Touches,
with dreadful tones of agony in her voice, her eyes becoming hard and
brilliant. "If you knew, Beatrix, the tears I have shed over the lost
years of my youth! To be loved out of pity! to know that one owes
one's happiness only to perpetual care, to the slyness of cats, to
traps laid for innocence and all the youthful virtues--oh, it is
infamous! If it were not that one finds absolution in the magnitude of
love, in the power of happiness, in the certainty of being forever
above all other women in his memory, the first to carve on that young
heart the ineffaceable happiness of an absolute devotion, I would
--yes, if he asked it,--I would fling myself into the sea.
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