“Oh, only half-mourning! It is eighteen months now.” She turned again to the Captain. “We are going on Sunday to the Battle of Flowers at Aix. Do come with us. It will be an excuse for an excursion. And in the evening we are to dine at the Club with a few friends, quite a small party. You will meet some comrades there--Count de Marthenay, who is in the dragoons, and Lieutenant Berlier, your friend, is he not? You have heard that they are talking of his marriage with Isabelle Orlandi, the beauty.” She gave out the falsehood, which she had invented on the spur of the moment, for the purpose of wounding the proud Paule who dared to cross her wishes. Woman can see, it is hard to say how, by some method of divination of which both the desire to please and the desire to injure make her mistress, those affinities which cause the hearts, souls, and bodies of men and women to seek and find one another. How excellent a plan it is, for instance, to make a dinner-party go off well by placing the guests according to one’s ideas of their sympathies--the very way, perhaps to bring those sympathies into being. Again, the evil-speaking that there is in the world bears witness to remarkable intuition and marvellous powers of analysis. In the majority of cases the libel rests on no positive evidence, and yet there is all the appearance of truth. The persons concerned are sketched with a natural touch, cruelly of course, but always with due regard to probability. Madame Dulaurens gained nothing tangible by the exercise of her inventive faculty, for the young girl gave no sign; whether it was because she had learnt self-restraint so early or because the news was really indifferent to her. “Then we can count on you?” she demanded, pretending to be waiting for the answer from Marcel’s own lips. Alice glanced at the young officer with her eyes pale as the Savoy skies; while Paule also had her eye on him, but her look was serious. He understood perfectly that Madame Dulaurens was trying to separate him from his sister; and, listening to the guidance of that family loyalty which Dr. Guibert had instilled into each of his children, he refused the invitation. “Thank you, Madame, but my homecoming has revived so many recent sorrows that I do not wish to leave Le Maupas.” There was a flash of joy in the dark eyes, while long quivering lashes veiled the downcast blue ones. “He is in need of rest,” put in Madame Guibert. Alice was looking over the graveled courtyard. She spoke now with a slight blush. “It was your father who cured me. Once you used to come to La Chênaie very often. Paule was my dearest friend. You must not give us up.” When at last she raised her pale blue eyes she met Marcel’s glance and smiled. Then she blushed again, for her color was influenced by the secret workings of her heart. “They shall certainly call upon you, Mademoiselle Dulaurens,” said Madame Guibert, rather surprised at Paule’s silence.