Preceded by a faint waft of scent and a rustle of silk, she reappeared, tying the strings of the hat that made a dainty diadem above her smiling eyes. Edgar looked at her curiously: "Why, mother, there's something... I don't know what. . . something that alters you." She glanced in the mirror, examining her hair, which showed pale violet shadows amid the flaxen plaits. "Oh! it's nothing," she said; "only I have put some powder in my hair. Like the Empress," she added, and broke into another smile. As she was drawing on her gloves, a ring was heard, and the maid came in to tell her mistress that Monsieur Delbèque was waiting to see her. Madame Ewans pouted and declared she could not receive him, whereupon the maid spoke a few words in a very peremptory whisper. Madame Ewans shrugged her shoulders. "Stay where you are!" she told the boys, and passed into the dining-room, whence the murmur of two voices could presently be heard. Jean asked Edgar, under his breath, who the gentleman was. "Monsieur Delbèque," Edgar informed him. "He keeps horses and a carriage. He deals in pigs. One evening he took us to the theatre, mother and me." Jean was surprised and rather shocked to find Monsieur Delbèque dealt in pigs. But he hid his surprise and asked if he was a relation. "Oh! no," said Edgar, "he's one of our friends. It's a long time... at least a year we have known him." Jean, harking back to his first idea, put the question: "Have you ever seen him selling his pigs?" "How stupid you are!" retorted Edgar; "he deals in them wholesale. Mother says it's a famous trade. He has a cigar-holder with an amber mouthpiece and a woman all naked carved in meerschaum. Just think, the other day he came and told mother his wife was making him atrocious scenes." Madame Ewans put in her head at the half-open door: "Come along," she said, and they set out. No sooner were they in the street than a man, who was smoking, greeted Madame with a friendly wave of his gloved hand. She muttered between her teeth: "Shall we never be done with them?" The man began in a guttural voice: "I was just going to your place, my dear, to offer you a box of Turkish cigarettes. But I see you are taking a boarding-school out for a walk--a regular boarding-school, 'pon my word! You take pupils, eh? I congratulate you. Make men of 'em, my dear, make men of 'em." Madame Ewans frowned and replied with a curl of the lips: "I am with my son and one of my son's friends." The gentleman threw a careless look at one of the lads--Jean Servien as it happened. "Capital, capital!" he exclaimed. "Is that one your son?" "Not he, indeed!" she cried hotly. Jean felt he was looked down upon, and as she laid her hand on her son's shoulder with a proud gesture, he could not help noticing his schoolfellow's easy air and elegant costume, at the same time casting a glance of disgust at his own jacket, which had been cut down for him by his aunt out of an overcoat of his father's.