"Felicia!"

If nothing is more open to suspicion than the friendship of two
fashionable ladies sharing the prerogatives of drawing-room royalty and
lavishing on each other epithets, and the trivial graces of feminine
fondness, the friendships of childhood keep in the grown woman
a frankness of manner which distinguishes them, and makes them
recognisable among all others, bonds woven naively and firm as the
needlework of little girls in which an experienced hand had been
prodigal of thread and big knots; plants reared in fresh soil, in
flower, but with strong roots, full of vitality and new shoots. And what
a joy, hand in hand--you glad dances of boarding-school days, where are
you?--to retrace some steps of one's way with somebody who has an equal
acquaintance with it and its least incidents, and the same laugh of
tender retrospection. A little apart, the two girls, for whom it has
been sufficient to find themselves once more face to face to forget five
years of separation, carry on a rapid exchange of recollections, while
the little _pere_ Joyeuse, his ruddy face brightened by a new cravat,
straightens himself in pride to see his daughter thus warmly welcomed by
such an illustrious person. Proud certainly he had reason to be, for
the little Parisian, even in the neighbourhood of her brilliant friend,
holds her own in grace, youth, fair candour, beneath her twenty smooth
and golden years, which the gladness of this meeting brings to fresh
bloom.

"How happy you must be! For my part, I have seen nothing yet; but I hear
everybody saying it is so beautiful."

"Happy above all to see you again, little Aline. It is so long--"

"I should think so, you naughty girl! Whose the fault?"

And from the saddest corner of her memory, Felicia recalls the date of
the breaking off of their relations, coinciding for her with another
date on which her youth came to its end in an unforgettable scene.

"And what have you been doing, darling, all this time?"

"Oh, I, always the same thing--or, nothing to speak of."

"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing!
Giving your life to other people, isn't it?"

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately to
some one straight in front of her; and Felicia, turning round to see who
it was, perceived Paul de Gery replying to the shy and tender greeting
of Mlle. Joyeuse.

"You know each other, then?"

"Do I know M. Paul! I should think so