Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/368

 all this played, like a little sulphurous flame, her acrid scorn and contempt for them, her vitriolic satisfaction in having cheated and beaten them, in having turned them inside out and made fools of them, without their ever once suspecting it. Her husband's admiration of her powers was boundless.

"That is now one of the most properous [sic] and successful lycées in eastern France," he told the girls, "and every year they have a big dinner with my wife as guest of honor, with speeches and things, and somebody lays a wreath on her as though she were a statue. Quite a joke, hein?"

"Well, that must be an enjoyable occasion indeed," thought Marise, seeing the scene as though she had been there; the simple-minded provincials, trying simple-mindedly to honor the founder of their lycée; Mme. Vallery sitting at the right hand of their Mayor, with her mild air of deprecating the too-great honor done her—and her little sulphurous flame of vitriolic contempt playing over the convolutions of her brain. "Yes, it is a very pretty world we live in," thought Marise, laughing heartily at Mme. Vallery's satirical imitation of one of the clumsy speeches made in her honor on the last occasion.

She thought it still a prettier world, when in the cab as she was accompanying Eugenia back to Auteuil, Eugenia said, radiating satisfaction, "I'm to have my part in the fête-de-charite, too!"

"You are!" said Marise, "what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to give the money to pay for the appearance of a Russian dancer … the very newest thing. It will be the clou of the entire fête. And my name is going on the program!"

"Eh bien!" cried Marise in the liveliest surprise, "why, I didn't hear a word about all this."

"No, it was in talking with M. Vallery that the plan was made. He hadn't dreamed of their being able to afford such a thing. It was my own idea. He was quite carried away by it, couldn't see how I came to think of it."

Marise was silent, meditating profoundly on the prettiness of the world in which we are called upon to live. The more