第405章

ANOTHER SECRET.

The following scene took place a few days after the abduction of Rose-

Pompon by Ninny Moulin.Mdlle.de Cardoville was seated in a dreamy mood, in her cabinet, which was hung with green silk, and furnished with an ebony library, ornamented with large bronze caryatides.By some significant signs, one could perceive that Mdlle.de Cardoville had sought in the fine airs some relief from sad and serious thoughts.Near an open piano, was a harp, placed before a music-stand.A little further, on a table covered with boxes of oil and water-color, were several brilliant sketches.Most of them represented Asiatic scenes, lighted by the fires of an oriental sun.Faithful to her fancy of dressing herself at home in a picturesque style, Mademoiselle de Cardoville resembled that day one of those proud portraits of Velasquez, with stern and noble aspect.Her gown was of black moire, with wide-

swelling petticoat, long waist, and sleeve slashed with rose-colored satin, fastened together with jet bugles.A very stiff, Spanish ruff reached almost to her chin, and was secured round her neck by a broad rose-colored ribbon.This frill, slightly heaving, sloped down as far as the graceful swell of the rose-colored stomacher, laced with strings of jet beads, and terminating in a point at the waist.It is impossible to express how well this black garment, with its ample and shining folds, relieved with rose-color and brilliant jet, skin, harmonized with the shining whiteness of Adrienne's and the golden flood of her beautiful hair, whose long, silky ringlets descended to her bosom.

The young lady was in a half-recumbent posture, with her elbow resting on a couch covered with green silk.The back of this piece of furniture, which was pretty high towards the fireplace, sloped down insensibly towards the foot.A sort of light, semicircular trellis-work, in gilded bronze, raised about five feet from the ground, covered with flowering plants (the admirable passiflores quadrangulatoe, planted in a deep ebony box, from the centre of which rose the trellis-work), surrounded this couch with a sort of screen of foliage enamelled with large flowers, green without, purple within, and as brilliant as those flowers of porcelain, which we receive from Saxony.A sweet, faint perfume, like a faint mixture of jasmine with violet, rose from the cup of these admirable passiflores.Strange enough, a large quantity of new books (Adrienne having bought them since the last two or three days) and quite fresh-cut, were scattered around her on the couch, and on a little table;

whilst other larger volumes, amongst which were several atlases full of engravings, were piled on the sumptuous fur, which formed the carpet beneath the divan.Stranger still, these books, though of different forms, and by different authors, alt treated of the same subject.The posture of Adrienne revealed a sort of melancholy dejection.Her cheeks were pale; a light blue circle surrounded her large, black eyes, now half-closed, and gave to them an expression of profound grief.Many causes contributed to this sorrow--amongst others, the disappearance of Mother Bunch.Without absolutely believing the perfidious insinuations of Rodin, who gave her to understand that, in the fear of being unmasked by him, the hunchback had not dared to remain in the house, Adrienne felt a cruel sinking of the heart, when she thought how this young girl, in whom she had had so much confidence, had fled from her almost sisterly hospitality, without even uttering a word of gratitude; for care had been taken not to show her the few lines written by the poor needlewoman to her benefactress, just before her departure.