..
"Your ladyship's thoughts seem to be rather 'warm' this evening," she
concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase which she had heard used, on some
earlier occasion, by her friend.
In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting
of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and
then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the
furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing
like a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle. Vinteuil fell down exhausted
upon the sofa, where she was screened from me by the stooping body of her
friend. But the latter now had her back turned to the little table on
which the old music-master's portrait had been arranged. Mlle. Vinteuil
realised that her friend would not see it unless her attention were drawn
to it, and so exclaimed, as if she herself had just noticed it for the
first time: "Oh! there's my father's picture looking at us; I can't think
who can have put it there; I'm sure I've told them twenty times, that is
not the proper place for it."
I remembered the words that M.
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