Beck Center English Dept. University Libraries Emory University
Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections:
Women's Genre Fiction Project

Adrienne, an electronic edition

by Rita

date: 1898
source publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
collection: Genre Fiction

Table of Contents

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CHAPTER XVIII.

"ADRIENNE! Good heavens! what has happened?" exclaimed the Marquise de Savigny.

She had but just returned home from a ball. A misty cloud of black and silver, with here and there a knot of scarlet, floated round her dainty little figure. Adrienne, with her ghastly face, her wild eyes, her trembling limbs, looked a strange contrast to the radiant little beauty. She sank down on a couch near at hand, and a storm of passionate weeping shook her from head to foot.

The little Marquise was amazed. She hurriedly locked the door of her boudoir, and then knelt down by her friend's side, murmuring a thousand endearing words, soothing her by those soft caresses that women know so well how to use. Gradually Adrienne grew calm, and some sense, too, of the strangeness of her conduct began to fill her mind. She told Odylle of her discovery of her husband's faithlessness, of her resolve never again to live beneath his roof, of the wanton outrage to her pride, her dignity, her love, she had suffered at his hands to-night. All these things she poured out in broken words, between heavy sobs, clinging to her friend as she had clung to her in the brief sorrows of her girlhood, shaken from all the | | 202 pride and composure of her usual character by the hysterical, overmastering grief that had now taken possession of her.

The little Marquise was horrified at the thought of the scandal this rashness would occasion.

"My most dear," she cried entreatingly, "compose yourself; be rational, for heaven's sake! What is the use of breaking your heart over a man's infidelity? They are all alike--all bad. You are wounded--insulted, doubtless; but can you make it any better by exposing your husband and calling the world's attention to your own wrongs? Believe me, we all have to undergo these troubles some time or other. Have I not told you often that to expect fidelity from a man is to expect a miracle? Now, dearest, be rational. Supposing I had flown away from my husband's roof every time I discovered some little peccadillo of this sort. Ciel! where should I be now?"

"If you chose to put up with such wrongs, I cannot. I am different!" answered Adrienne, lifting her tear-stained face from the couch, and looking down at the sparkling, beautiful little creature before her, much as a wounded deer might look at a butterfly flashing in the sunlight on which its own glazed eyes would soon close.

"Oh, but this is absurd!" cried the Marquise. "Leave your husband--go away from him. My dear, what will you do? You will have no position, no station, no home. Oh, surely you are not foolish enough to mean such a thing!"

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"An Englishwoman looks at these matters differently," said Adrienne calmly. "She will not tamely submit to such an insult as I have received to-night!"

"A Frenchwoman can feel just as deeply," said Odylle, flushing hotly. "And after all, ma chère English husbands are not a whit more faithful to their wives than ours. Witness the details of your Divorce Court! But here we do not expose ourselves to open scorn or pretended commiseration. We bear our wrongs in silence--or revenge them for ourselves. You will never do the latter, that I know; so you must be patient and put up with Armand de Valtour's faults. You will do no good by exposing him. You will only be the talk of society, and all your enemies will triumph, and half your friends will smile. Ah, mon ami, do be reasonable. Treat the matter as other women would. What have you to gain by persisting in your determination? Nothing. On the other hand, what have you to lose? Everything. Come, listen to me. Be wise. One day you will be glad you have taken my advice."

A cold, bitter look came over Adrienne's face.

"I will not be wise in your sense," she said. "My mind is made up. I will make no scandal, no such fuss as you dread. But I will go to Valtours and live there with Céline, and, from this hour, my husband and I are strangers!"

Madame Odylle drew back and looked at her amazed. In her own heart she thought her unutterably foolish.

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"You superior people are always so tragic," she said, shrugging her pretty bare shoulders. "Ma foi! What should I care for any nonsense of my husband's! I have had anonymous letters--scores of them. I only laughed. I never sought to verify their accusations. By the way, which woman is it that Armand has decided upon?"

"Which?" Adrienne started to her feet. Her face blanched, her eyes blazed wrathfully. "Good heavens, Odylle! do you mean to say there are more than one?"

Madame Odylle looked startled.

"I? No, of course I cannot say. What should I know?" she stammered. "I have heard of him and his doings; in fact, my dear, I dare say you are almost the only one in Paris who has not heard of them. But after all, Madame Lissac and he are old friends. There may have been no harm done!"

"Madame Lissac!" said Adrienne; "what of her? It was not Madame Lissac who was with him to-night?"

Odylle looked confused.

"No?" she questioned uncomfortably. "Oh! Well I thought, perhaps, you had heard something about her. But that is an old story. Cela ne fait rien. I think she was only a friend."

"A friend!" Adrienne smiled bitterly. "What a fool I have been!" she said. "All the world knows my husband's infidelities, and I have been worshipping him as a hero!"

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"You would do it, you know, my dear," said the little Marquise plaintively. "I have always told you love is a mistake."

"You are right," answered Adrienne calmly; "it is a mistake. From this hour I have done with it."

"Ah! I gave you two years," said Odylle thoughtfully. "It has not taken half that time to convince you that nowadays romance is a folly; we pay for it too dearly to make it any longer a marketable article. Well, dear, you have a chance of being happy now. Tell me, what can I do for you? my house, myself are at your service. Stay here if you please, and if to-morrow you are still of the same mind, I will go down to Valtours with you myself. I cannot say more than that. Only, for your own sake, dear one, and the world's, let there be no scandal."

Adrienne smiled bitterly.

"I do not see how it is to be avoided," she said. "I left home unknown to any one. I shall be missed in the morning--perhaps even to-night, if M. de Valtour thinks fit to return home."

"What!" screamed the little Marquise, "you have done all this? Oh! Adrienne--but how you are foolish and impracticable! Why, you have really placed yourself in the wrong. He can turn upon you and say you have left your home--run away--God knows what! What are we to do?"

"It does not concern me what the world says," answered Adrienne calmly.

Her grief and agony had spent itself; she was | | 206 quite cold and still now. Only a great faintness and weariness oppressed her, and the pretty room and the little radiant figure, pacing to and fro so excitedly, grew sometimes dark and indistinct before her eyes.

"Oh! you make me quite angry with you," stormed Madame Odylle. "You think of nothing, care for nothing. Ah! pardon me," she added, with momentary penitence, as she looked at the white face, the weary grace of the tall, proud figure; "you are worn out, exhausted. I must not scold you more. Come to bed now; you need rest. To-morrow will, perhaps, bring wisdom to our councils."

Adrienne was too utterly spent to refuse. The little Marquise rang for her own confidential maid, and gave her the orders about her friend's room.

"Madame la Comtesse is not well; she will stay the night here," she said; "and order one of the men to go round to the Hôtel Valtours with a note immediately."

"It is all I can do," she added to Adrienne, when they were once more alone. "It will save scandal, I hope."

Adrienne's lip curled bitterly.

"Always the world!" she said. "If our hearts break, our lives are ruined, our whole heart's happiness sacrificed--still there is always that bugbear of the world's comments! Oh! Odylle, if I were only dead and at rest!"

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"I have said the same thing myself sometimes," said the little Marquise, a mist of tears rising suddenly to her brilliant eyes; "I think all women do!"

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