This lady was now dead.
But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and then
in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other respects
quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a piano. And so
Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully aware of the
cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which the pianist was
rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The closing notes of
the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her lips. And she
murmured "How charming it is!" with a stress on the opening consonants of
the adjective, a token of her refinement by which she felt her lips so
romantically compressed, like the petals of a beautiful, budding flower,
that she instinctively brought her eyes into harmony, illuminating them
for a moment with a vague and sentimental gaze. Meanwhile Mme. de
Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to herself how annoying it
was that she had so few opportunities of meeting the Princesse des Laumes,
for she meant to teach her a lesson by not acknowledging her bow. She did
not know that her cousin was in the room.
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