their turn, and the hushed step of Count Muffat was alone audible as he
crossed the floor. The lamps seemed to have paled; the fire was going
out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old friends of the house where they
sat in the chairs they had occupied there for forty years back. It was
as though in a momentary pause of conversation the invited guests
had become suddenly aware that the count's mother, in all her glacial
stateliness, had returned among them.

But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:

"Well, at last the news of it got about. The young man was likely to
die, and that would explain the poor child's adoption of the religious
life. Besides, they say that Monsieur de Fougeray would never have given
his consent to the marriage."

"They say heaps of other things too," cried Leonide giddily.

She fell a-laughing; she refused to talk. Sabine was won over by this
gaiety and put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the vast
and solemn room their laughter sounded a note which struck Fauchery
strangely, the note of delicate glass breaking. Assuredly here was the
first beginning of the "little rift." Everyone began talking again. Mme
du Joncquoy demurred; Mme Chantereau knew for certain that a marriage
had been projected but that matters had gone no further; the men even
ventured to give their opinions. For some minutes the conversation was
a babel of opinions, in which the divers elements of the circle, whether
Bonapartist or Legitimist or merely worldly and skeptical, appeared to
jostle one another simultaneously. Estelle had rung to order wood to
be put on the fire; the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed
to wake from sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though once more at his