Part 23 (1/2)
Silence followed.
”Whom do--”
”I wish to see M. Honore Grandissime.”
”That is my name, madame.”
”Ah!”--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now, and was ready for war. ”You are not one of his clerks?”
M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: ”You little honey-bee, you want to sting me, eh?” and then he answered her question.
”No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for.”
”The gentleman she was look--” her pride resented the fact.
”Me!”--thought she--”I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you have been longing to meet ever since the ball;” but her look was unmoved gravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and handed him the rent notice.
”I received that from your office the Monday before last.”
There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it was the day of the run-over.
Honore Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only half unfolded, saw the advisability of calling up all the resources of his sagacity and wit in order to answer wisely; and as they answered his call a brighter n.o.bility so overspread face and person that Aurora inwardly exclaimed at it even while she exulted in her thrust.
”Monday before last?”
She slightly bowed.
”A serious misfortune befell me that day,” said M. Grandissime.
”Ah?” replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress, ”but you have entirely recovered, I suppose.”
”It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification for which I fear you will accept no apology.”
”On the contrary,” said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation, ”it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse.”
M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped his glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:
”My horse is very well, I thank you.”
But as he read the paper, his face a.s.sumed a serious air and he seemed to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.
”He is trying to think how he will get rid of me,” thought Aurora; ”he is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenth of March comes we shall be put into the street.”
M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift her hands.
”I beg to a.s.sure you, madame, I could never have permitted this notice to reach you from my office; I am not the Honore Grandissime for whom this is signed.”
Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the subterfuge she had been antic.i.p.ating. Had she been at home she would have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiled meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made an unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.
”There are, you know,”--began Honore, with a smile which changed the meaning to ”You know very well there are”--”two Honore Grandissimes.