"If I were a girl of your age," mused Madame as though to herself, "I do not think that ring would go to England."
"How, Mamma, would you steal it?"
"No, but I would make sure that it was given to me."
Now Juliette could no longer feign not to understand. She said nothing, but turned as red as Godfrey had done a little while before and stood waiting.
"I find him charming," repeated Madame, "though he is so young, which is a fault that will mend," and she fixed her eyes upon her daughter's face with a look of interrogation.
Then Juliette gave a little sigh and answered: "Good. If you will make me say it, so do I also, at least, sometimes I think so, when he is not dull," and turning she fled from the room.
Madame smiled as the door closed behind her.
"That goes well, and should go better," she said to herself. "Only, for whom is the ring? There must be some girl in England, although of her he says nothing. Peste! There are so many girls. Still, she is far away, and this one is near. But it could be wished that she were more experienced, for then, since she likes him well enough, all would be sure. What does a man count in such a case--especially when he is so young? Pish! nothing at all," and Madame snapped her fingers at the empty air. "It is the woman who holds the cards, if only she knows how to play them."
Now all these things happened on a Wednesday. When Godfrey went to bed that night uncomfortable memories of Madame Riennes, and of the chaste embrace which she had forced him to impress upon her expansive forehead, haunted him for a while, also fears for the future. However, Sunday was still a long way off, so he went to sleep and dreamed that he was buying presents at every shop in Lucerne and giving them all to Madame Riennes.
On Thursday he was quite happy. On Friday he began to suffer from uneasiness, which on Saturday became very pronounced. It seemed to him that already waves of influence were creeping towards him like the fringes of some miasmic mist. Doubtless it was imagination, but he could feel their first frail tentacles wrapping themselves around his will, and drawing him towards Lucerne. As the day went on the tentacles grew stronger, till by evening there might have been a very octopus behind them. If this were so that night, he wondered what would happen on the following day, when the octopus began to pull. On one point he was determined. He would not go; never would he allow Madame Riennes to put him to sleep again, and what was much worse to make him kiss her. At any rate that spirit, Eleanor, was beautiful and attractive--but Madame Riennes! Rather than forgather with her again in this affectionate manner, much as he dreaded it--or her--he would have compounded with the ghost called Eleanor.