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Page 52
And she broke forth into a roll of that sudden, graceful, but somewhat
equivocal laughter that was habitual with her. Then raising her voice:
"You may come, Pierre; your friend is my friend now!"
She left the two men shaking hands cordially, and exchanging the usual
greetings, jumped into the carriage, and resuming her seat at her mother's
side:
"Mother," she said, kissing her at the same time, "the meeting came off
very well--didn't it, Monsieur de Lucan?"
"Very well, indeed," said Lucan, laughingly, "except some minor details."
"Oh! you are too hard to please, sir!" said Julia, drawing her wrappings
around her.
The next moment Monsieur de Lucan was cantering by the carriage door,
while the three travelers inside were indulging in one of those expansive
talks that usually follow the happy solution of a dreaded crisis.
Clotilde, henceforth in the full possession of all her affections, was
fairly soaring in the ethereal blue.
"You are too handsome, mother," said Julia. "With such a big girl as I am,
it is a positive crime!"
And she kissed her again.
Lucan, while participating in the conversation and doing to Julia the
honors of the landscape, was trying to sum up within himself his
impressions of the ceremony which had just taken place. Upon the whole he
thought, as did his step-daughter, that it had come off very well,
although it was not quite perfection. Perfection would have been to find
in Julia a plain and unaffected woman, who would have simply thrown
herself in her step-father's arms and laughed with him at her spoilt
child's escapade; but he had never expected Julia's manners to be quite as
frank and open as that. She had done in the present circumstances all that
could be expected of a nature like hers; she had shown herself graciously
friendly; she had, it is true, imparted to this first interview a certain
solemn and dramatic turn. She was romantic, and as Lucan was tolerably so
himself, this whim of hers had not proved unpleasant to him.
He had been, moreover, agreeably surprised at the beauty of Madame de
Moras, which was indeed striking. The severe regularity of her features,
the deep luster of her blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, the
exquisite harmony of her form were not her only, nor indeed her principal
attractions; she owed her rare and personal charm to a sort of strange
grace mingled with flexibility and strength, that lent enchantment to her
every motion. She had in the play of her countenance, in her step, in her
gestures, the sovereign ease of a woman who does not feel a single weak
point in her beauty, and who moves, grows, and blossoms with all the
freedom of a child in his cradle or a fallow deer in the forest. Made as
she was, she had no difficulty in dressing well; the simplest costumes
fitted her person with an elegant precision that caused the Baroness de
Pers to say in her inaccurate though expressive language:
"A pair of kid gloves would be enough to dress her with."
During that same day and those that followed, Julia conquered new titles
to Monsieur de Lucan's good graces, by manifesting a strong liking for the
chateau of Vastville and the surrounding sites. The chateau pleased her
for its romantic style, its old-fashioned garden ornamented with yews and
evergreens, the lonely avenues of the park, and its melancholy woods
scattered with ruins. She went into ecstasies at the sight of the vast
heather plains lashed by the ocean winds, the trees with twisted and
convulsive tops, the tall granite cliffs worn by the everlasting waves.
"All that," she said, laughingly, "has a great deal of character;" and as
she had a great deal of it herself, she felt in her element. She had found
the home of her dreams, she was happy.
Her mother, to whom she paid up in passionate effusions all arrearages of
tenderness, was still more so.
The greater part of the day was spent riding about on horseback. After
dinner, Julia, with that joyous and somewhat feverish spirit that animated
her, related her travels, parodying in a good-natured manner her own
enthusiasm and her husband's relative indifference in presence of the
masterpieces of antique art. She illustrated these recollections with
scenes of mimicry in which she displayed the skill of a fairy, the
imagination of an artist, and sometimes the broad humor of a low comedian.
In a turn of the hand, with a flower, a bit of silk, a sheet of paper, she
composed a Neapolitan, Roman, or Sicilian head-dress. She performed scenes
from ballets or operas, pushing back the train of her dress with a tragic
sweep of her foot, and accentuating strongly the commonplace exclamations
of Italian lyricism:
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