Mardi Gras was a tiresome day, after all, she sighed, and Tante
Louise agreed with her for once.
Six o'clock had come, the hour when all masks must be removed.
The long red rays of the setting sun glinted athwart the
many-hued costumes of the revellers trooping unmasked homeward to
rest for the night's last mad frolic.
Down Toulouse Street there came the merriest throng of all.
Young men and women in dainty, fairy-like garb, dancers, and
dresses of the picturesque Empire, a butterfly or two and a dame
here and there with powdered hair and graces of olden time.
Singing with unmasked faces, they danced toward Tante Louise and
Odalie. She stood with eyes lustrous and tear-heavy, for there
in the front was Pierre, Pierre the faithless, his arms about the
slender waist of a butterfly, whose tinselled powdered hair
floated across the lace ruffles of his Empire coat.
"Pierre!" cried Odalie, softly. No one heard, for it was a mere
faint breath and fell unheeded. Instead the laughing throng
pelted her with flowers and candy and went their way, and even
Pierre did not see.
You see, when one is shut up in the grim walls of a Royal Street
house, with no one but a Tante Louise and a grim judge, how is
one to learn that in this world there are faithless ones who may
glance tenderly into one's eyes at mass and pass the holy water
on caressing fingers without being madly in love? There was no
one to tell Odalie, so she sat at home in the dull first days of
Lent, and nursed her dear dead love, and mourned as women have
done from time immemorial over the faithlessness of man.
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