"M. de Chagny!" she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her visitor.
"Ah, it's Heaven that sends you here!...We can talk of HER."
This last sentence sounded very gloomily in the young man's ears.
He at once asked:
"Madame...where is Christine?"
And the old lady replied calmly:
"She is with her good genius!"
"What good genius?" exclaimed poor Raoul.
"Why, the Angel of Music!"
The viscount dropped into a chair. Really? Christine was with
the Angel of Music? And there lay Mamma Valerius in bed, smiling to
him and putting her finger to her lips, to warn him to be silent!
And she added:
"You must not tell anybody!"
"You can rely on me," said Raoul.
He hardly knew what he was saying, for his ideas about Christine,
already greatly confused, were becoming more and more entangled;
and it seemed as if everything was beginning to turn around him,
around the room, around that extraordinary good lady with the white hair
and forget-me-not eyes.
"I know! I know I can!" she said, with a happy laugh. "But why don't
you come near me, as you used to do when you were a little boy?
Give me your hands, as when you brought me the story of little Lotte,
which Daddy Daae had told you.
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