During Marguerite’s convent days Hortense Gervex had lived at Plenhöel as a very superior sort of housekeeper, looking, together with Quentin, after the Marquis’s interests, and keeping the château continually ready to receive him in the intervals of his trips to known and sometimes unknown portions of the globe. Years before, when widowed at twenty by the premature drowning of her husband, a fine young sailorman in command of a coasting steamer, she had come to Plenhöel as companion and reader to “Antinoüs’s” mother. She was now fifty-five, extremely well preserved, and very comely, with her thick blond hair, slightly frosted with silver above the temples, her wholesome face, and calm, blue-green eyes; and she literally adored the “Gamin.” After Quentin’s departure she remained for a few moments more, watching the bathers frolicking in the wavelets below. Marguerite and her father were swimming back now, and presently ran foul of a school of porpoises playing “follow-my-leader” with the utmost gaiety. Madame Hortense saw Marguerite dive suddenly and come up immediately behind a big, shining fellow, whom she playfully slapped on the side. Girl and fish disappeared together in a quick smother of foam; then the fair head, darkened by immersion to a golden brown, emerged again and followed in the wake of the paternal one. “Ah, my little mermaid!” murmured Madame Hortense. “_Ma jolie petite sirène!_ Is what that scamp of Quentin hints at truly possible?” Her affectionate eyes followed the thought to the float, and their expression slowly hardened. Laurence was still standing before Basil in the same provocative attitude, still busy with her splendid hair, twisting and untwisting it, as though to wring it dry. The hidden sun had just made up his mind to peep through his veil of pearly vapors, and a primrose glow of delicious warmth suffused the two figures. In that revealing light Madame Hortense became suddenly aware of the science that had presided over the making of Miss Seton’s costume, in spite of all its maidenly whiteness. The young girl’s illuminated silhouette all at once seemed terribly shocking to her in its Venus-like beauty--(_Vénus sortant de l’onde_)--and with a short exclamation she too turned on her heel and, running up the steps to the esplanade, rapidly entered the château. Her brows were knit and the flame of indignation shone warlike in her eyes. The way to her own domain led past the suite of rooms occupied by Laurence, and with perfect deliberation she opened the door of the boudoir off the sleeping-apartment and entered.