Mme. de la Vaudraye's hand and, raising it to her lips, murmured:
"You poor dear!"
And she did this not designedly, because it was Guillaume's mother whom she was conciliating, but from an undefined and all-powerful instinct that compelled her to be kind to this humiliated and disappointed woman.
It was the same instinct which had guided her hitherto and which made her still more attentive and affectionate in the days that followed, notwithstanding a certain sense of constraint which she felt in Mme. de la Vaudraye's presence. She knew no greater pleasure than to smooth the wrinkles from those sullen features at the moment when they were most firmly set; and to do this she employed all sorts of childish rogueries:
"Come, try hard and laugh. ... There, you have laughed!"
Mme. de la Vaudraye was touched by all
