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Page 53
"Oh, Ciel! Crudel! Perfido! Oh, dio! Perdona!"
Or else, kneeling on an arm-chair, she imitated the voice and manner of a
preacher she had heard in Rome, and who did not seem to have sufficiently
edified her.
Through all these various performances she never lost a particle of her
grace, and her most comical attitudes retained a certain elegance.
After all these frolics she would resume her expression of a listless
queen. Beneath the charm of the life and prestige of this brilliant
nature, Monsieur de Lucan readily forgave Julia the caprices and
peculiarities of which she was lavishly prodigal, especially toward her
step-father. She showed herself generally with him what she had been at
the start; friendly and polite, with a shade of haughty irony; but she had
strong inequalities of temper. Lucan surprised sometimes her gaze riveted
upon him with a painful and almost fierce expression. One day she repelled
with sullen rudeness the hand he offered to assist her in alighting from
her horse or in climbing over a fence. She seemed to avoid every occasion
of finding herself alone with him, and when she could not escape a
tete-a-tete of a few moments, she manifested either restless irritation or
mocking impertinence. Lucan fancied she reproached herself sometimes with
belying too much her former sentiments, and that she thought she owed it
to herself to give them from time to time a token of fidelity. He was
grateful to her, however, for reserving for himself alone these equivocal
manifestations, and for not troubling her mother with them. Upon the whole
he attached but a slight importance to these symptoms. If there still was
in the affectionate manifestations of his step-daughter something of a
struggle and an effort, it was on the part of that haughty nature an
excusable feature, a last resistance, which he flattered himself soon to
remove by multiplying his delicate attentions toward her.
Some two weeks after Julia's arrival, there was a ball given by the
Marchioness de Boisfresnay, in her chateau of Boisfresnay, which is
situated two or three miles from Vastville. Monsieur and Madame de Lucan
were on pleasant visiting-terms with the marchioness. They went to that
ball with Julia and her husband, the gentlemen in the coupe, the ladies,
on account of their dresses, occupying the carriage alone. Toward
midnight, Clotilde took her husband aside, and pointing to her daughter,
who was waltzing in the adjoining parlor with a naval officer:
"Hush! my dear," she said; "I have a frightful headache, and Pierre is
fairly bored to death; but we have not the courage to take Julia away so
early. Do you wish to make yourself very agreeable? You'll bring her home,
and we will start now, Pierre and myself; we'll leave you the carriage."
"Very well, dear," said Lucan, "run off, then."
Clotilde and Monsieur de Moras slipped away at once.
A moment later Julia, cleaving her way scornfully through the throng that
parted before her as before an angel of light, raised her superb brow and
made a sign to Lucan.
"I don't see mother," she said.
Lucan informed her in a few words of the arrangement which had just been
settled upon. A sudden flash darted across Julia's eyes; her brows became
contracted; she shrugged her shoulders slightly without replying, and
returned into the ball-room, waltzing through the crowd with the same
tranquil insolence. She betook herself again to the arm of a naval
officer, and seemed to enjoy whirling in all her splendor. And indeed her
ball-dress added a strange luster to her beauty. Her shoulders and throat,
emerging from her dress with a sort of chaste indifference, retained even
in the animation of the dance the cold and lustrous purity of marble.
Lucan asked her to waltz with him; she hesitated, but having consulted her
memory, she discovered that she had not yet exhausted the list of naval
officers who had swooped down in squadrons upon that rich prey. At the end
of an hour she got tired of being admired and called for the carriage. As
she was draping herself in her wrappings in the vestibule, her step-father
volunteered his services.
"No! I beg of you," she said, impatiently; "men don't know--don't know at
all!"
Then she threw herself in the carriage with a wearied look. However, as
the horses were starting:
"Smoke, sir," she said with a better grace.
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