"Philippe is not in Paris?" asked Count Muffat.
"Dear me, no!" replied the old lady. "He is always in garrison at
Bourges." She had seated herself and began talking with considerable
pride of her eldest son, a great big fellow who, after enlisting in
a fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained the rank of
lieutenant. All the ladies behaved to her with respectful sympathy,
and conversation was resumed in a tone at once more amiable and more
refined. Fauchery, at sight of that respectable Mme Hugon, that motherly
face lit up with such a kindly smile beneath its broad tresses of white
hair, thought how foolish he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine
even for an instant.
Nevertheless, the big chair with the red silk upholsteries in which the
countess sat had attracted his attention. Its style struck him as crude,
not to say fantastically suggestive, in that dim old drawing room.
Certainly it was not the count who had inveigled thither that nest
of voluptuous idleness. One might have described it as an experiment,
marking the birth of an appetite and of an enjoyment. Then he forgot
where he was, fell into brown study and in thought even harked back to
that vague confidential announcement imparted to him one evening in the
dining room of a restaurant.
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