The day was warm and the drive, despite the
shaded, watered avenues, a dusty, fatiguing one. Mrs. Sheldam had,
doubtfully, it is true, suggested the bourgeois comfort of the
Metropolitain, but she was frowned on by her enthusiastic niece. What!
ride underground in such weather? So they arrived at the poet's not in
the best of humour, for Mrs. Sheldam had quietly chidden her charge on
the score of her "flightiness." These foreign celebrities were well
enough in their way, but--! And now Ermentrude, instead of looking
Octave Keroulan in the face, preferred the vista of the pale blue sky,
awash with a scattered, fleecy white cloud, the rolling edges of which
echoed the dazzling sunshine. The garden was not large, its few trees
were of ample girth, and their shadows most satisfying to eyes weary of
the city's bright, hard surfaces. There were no sentimental plaster
casts to disturb the soft harmonies of this walled-in retreat, and if
Ermentrude preferred to regard with obstinacy unusual in her mobile
temperament the picture of Paris below them, it was because she felt
that Keroulan was literally staring at her.
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