Mme Hugon behaved unjustly too. The former especially never
left Les Fondettes, for he had given up the idea of renewing the
old connection and was busy paying the most respectful attentions to
Estelle. Fauchery also stayed with the Muffat ladies. On one occasion
only he had met Mignon with an armful of flowers, putting his sons
through a course of botanical instruction in a by-path. The two men had
shaken hands and given each other the news about Rose. She was perfectly
well and happy; they had both received a letter from her that morning in
which she besought them to profit by the fresh country air for some days
longer. Among all her guests the old lady spared only Count Muffat and
Georges. The count, who said he had serious business in Orleans, could
certainly not be running after the bad woman, and as to Georges, the
poor child was at last causing her grave anxiety, seeing that every
evening he was seized with atrocious sick headaches which kept him to
his bed in broad daylight.

Meanwhile Fauchery had become the Countess Sabine's faithful attendant
in the absence during each afternoon of Count Muffat. Whenever they
went to the end of the park he carried her campstool and her sunshade.
Besides, he amused her with the original witticisms peculiar to a
second-rate journalist, and in so doing he prompted her to one of those
sudden intimacies which are allowable in the country. She had apparently
consented to it from the first, for she had grown quite a girl again
in the society of a young man whose noisy humor seemed unlikely to
compromise her. But now and again, when for a second or two they found
themselves alone behind the shrubs, their eyes would meet; they would
pause amid their laughter, grow suddenly serious and view one another
darkly, as though they had fathomed and divined their inmost hearts.

On Friday a fresh place had to be laid at lunch time. M. Theophile
Venot, whom Mme Hugon remembered to have invited at the Muffats' last
winter, had just arrived. He sat stooping humbly forward and behaved
with much good nature, as became a man of no account, nor did he seem
to notice the anxious deference with which he was treated. When he had
succeeded in getting the company to forget his presence he sat nibbling
small lumps of sugar during dessert, looking sharply up at Daguenet as
the latter handed Estelle strawberries and listening to Fauchery, who
was making the countess very merry over one of his anecdotes. Whe