She crossed the room, and stood beside me while she opened the envelope.

Lucille, seeing the action, frowned, as I thought.

I was still under displeasure--still learning that the better sort of woman will not forgive deception so long as she herself is its motive, as cheap cynics would have us believe.
Madame read the letter with that self-repression which was habitual to her, and made me ever wonder what her youth had been.

Lucille and I watched her in silence.
"There," she said, and gave me the letter to pass to Lucille, who received it from my hand without taking her eyes from her mother's face.

Then I quitted the room, leaving the two women alone.