"Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister."
The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of speech for the
moment. The poor mad sinner had rushed off to some of her
wickednesses in Paris. Did I know? No? How could she tell
whether I did know or not? Well! I had hardly left the house, so
to speak, when Rita was down with her maid behaving as if the house
did really still belong to her. . .
"What time was it?" I managed to ask. And with the words my life
itself was being forced out through my lips. But Therese, not
noticing anything strange about me, said it was something like
half-past seven in the morning. The "poor sinner" was all in black
as if she were going to church (except for her expression, which
was enough to shock any honest person), and after ordering her with
frightful menaces not to let anybody know she was in the house she
rushed upstairs and locked herself up in my bedroom, while "that
French creature" (whom she seemed to love more than her own sister)
went into my salon and hid herself behind the window curtain.
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