Jean came out of the
smoking-room just then and they all began kissing--it was awful.
I got upstairs as quickly as I could, and Heloise soon joined me there.
She was enchanted at the idea of really getting rid of Victorine, and
she said Godmamma's rheumatism was growing so bad she would soon have
to spend the summer at German baths, and so they would fortunately at
last have Croixmare to themselves; and she could not thank me enough
for having assisted at this _denoument_.
All the evening Victorine played the tunes the music-master gave her,
and once or twice broke into a song of joy; but when I asked her to try
the one beginning "_Ma cruelle adoree,_" she looked green, and said she
was tired, and would go to bed.
[Sidenote: _A Game of Billiards_]
Then Jean and I had a game of billiards--we often do now after dinner.
The _salle de billard_ opens out of the salon, and there is a glass
like a window over the mantelpiece, so that you can see into the two
rooms from each other. It always reminds me of Alice, in "Through the
Looking Glass"--you expect to find a mirror, and you see into another
room.
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