Mauprat
disappointed gaze her own long, meagre back, instead of Edmée's beautiful face. Then she took some work out of her pocket, and quietly began to knit. Meanwhile the birds continued to warble, the chevalier to cough, Edmée to sleep or to pretend to sleep, while I remained at the other end of the room with my head bent over the prints in a book that I was holding upside down.
After some time I became aware that Edmée was not asleep, and that she was talking to her attendant in a low voice. I fancied I noticed the latter glancing at me from time to time out of the corner of her eye in a somewhat stealthy manner. To escape the ordeal of such an examination, and also from an impulse of cunning, which was by no means foreign to my nature, I let my head fall on the book, and the book on the pier-table, and in this posture I remained as if buried in sleep or thought. Then, little by little, their voices grew louder, until I could hear what they were saying about me.
"It's all the same; you have certainly chosen a funny sort of page, mademoiselle."
"A page, Leblanc! Why do you talk such nonsense? As if one had pages nowadays! You are always imagining we are still in my grandmother's time. I tell you he is my father's adopted son."
"M. le Chevalier is undoubtedly quite right to adopt a son; but where on earth did he fish up such a creature as that?"
I gave a side glance at them and saw that Edmée was laughing behind her fan. She was enjoying the chatter of this old maid, who was supposed to be a wag and allowed perfect freedom of speech. I was very much hurt to see that my cousin was making fun of me.
"He looks like a bear, a badger, a wolf, a kite, any-
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