Chapter FourThere was a sudden silence and Blanche’s eyes met Marguerite’s.
“You explain to her,” Blanche proposed softly.
She lay further back against her lace-trimmed pillows, watching Linetta’s face.
The girl was lovely, too lovely perhaps for the life they were suggesting for her, but at least with Marguerite’s and her help Linetta would start at the top.
She would not have to go through the misery that she had experienced when at fourteen a young shop assistant had taken her to the Closerie de Lilas.
There in the gas lit pleasure gardens, excited by the wine and exotically conflicting smells of scent and cigars, she had danced the Can-Can.
Her escort had vanished and left her to drink champagne with some of his friends. One of them, a Wallachian, seduced her and a few weeks late
