"Moina," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears, "you would not guess at once if you did not feel--""What?" asked Moina, almost haughtily. "Why, really, mother--"Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. "Moina," she said, "you must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--""I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline," she added with incredible self-possession; "I will send her away first."She rang the bell.
"My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--""Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck her mother as something unusual, "I must--"She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
"Pauline, go /yourself/ to Baudran's, and ask why my hat has not yet been sent."Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation, which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina's eyes to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt and indignant at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
"Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of /the father/--" she said, with a forced laugh.
Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space, as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.