Chapter IX: Part 9

It was dusk before mistress and maid had finished their task, and the last heap of small white garments had been arranged, and the last drawer returned to its place in the wide press against the wall. Horatia gave a sigh of satisfaction. The occupation had soothed her.

"Now, Martha, if you will bring me a cushion I shall want nothing more. Just put that easy chair by the fire, and a footstool, and I shall sit here till dinner time. If anyone asks for me you can say I am resting."

She was tired with the small extra exertion, but, for some reason extraordinarily happy this afternoon. As a rule the hours between four and six o'clock were the longest, but to-night they hardly seemed long enough. She settled herself deeper in the chair, looked up once at the picture, and closed her eyes. She had so much to think about.

* * * * *

An hour later and Armand's voice was saying, "Horatia, Horatia, what are you doing here? It is very cold in this room; you will be chilled. I cannot think what possessed you to come and sit in such a barn, though I hardly liked to wake you, for you were smiling about something."

*CHAPTER XII*

*(1)*

Horatia had been so little in shops of late that it was quite a pleasure to find herself again in Herbault's, whither, the day after this episode, she had gone on her afternoon drive. Smiling assistants hurried forward in the big mirrored room, and when they found that she only required a few yards of fine lace to match a pattern, which she drew from her reticule, they were just as eager to serve her as if she had been ordering one of their most expensive hats. Would Madame la Comtesse be seated, and they would see what could be done; was not the original lace from the border of a hat frilling which Madame had of them in the spring? It was, said Horatia, and she wanted some more if they still had it.

"Madame la Comtesse will permit me to observe that frillings round the face are out of date now," said the assistant doubtfully. "As Madame sees, we are not using any at present." She waved her hand at the rows of hats and bonnets perched on their stands.

Horatia smiled a little. "I want it for a different purpose--for a small cap," she said. "I liked the pattern so much, and I thought that if it would not give you too much trouble to find it..."

Nothing was too much trouble to serve Madame, she was assured, and the young milliner fluttered away.

Horatia felt pleasantly languid, content to study the latest creations, and to look at those who were trying them on. Not far away a customer was viewing, with satisfaction, a beret of brilliant violet velvet, trimmed with acanthus green, and quite close to her, on her left, was a large gilt screen, behind which, to judge from the conversation which flowed over it, two ladies were trying on canezous, or blouses, and gossiping at the same time. Horatia heard that though some unnamed "she" passed for one of the best dressed women in Paris, the speaker, for her part, thought otherwise. The other lady laughed, and said, "Are you not prejudiced, ma chere, because she would not receive your cousin after his little affair--you know what I mean?"

The first lady was plainly roused at this. "It was abominable of her!" she exclaimed. "And poor Georges, he was terribly chagrined about it. Besides, what business has she to set herself up as so much better than her neighbours, when everybody knows that she is overfond of Florian?"

"I thought that was only gossip," said the other.

"Gossip! when she sees him nearly every day! Why, everybody knows it. It began this summer when they were down in the country. I know that for a fact; and now, if you doubt it, come and stay in my appartement and you will see him go into her house every day as regular as clockwork, at hours when she receives no one else. I will wager you he is there now."

"After all," remarked the second lady thoughtfully, "it would be rather natural, when he was, as report says, so near marrying her. And certainly it would be difficult to be hardhearted where he is concerned. But it does not fall in with what we heard of his fondness for his wife. Why, they were always about together at one time!"

"Like Armand and me!" thought Horatia with a rather bitter amusement. "What an offence it must have been! I wonder who is this too-attractive 'Florian.'" Here the milliner brought her a card of lace of the pattern required, but a little too wide, intimating, however, her willingness to go back and have another search for the narrower kind.

By the time that the girl had gone off again on her errand there were signs that the ladies on the other side of the screen were departing. "Yes, send me those two canezous, the pink and the white ... I don't think Herbault's cut is as good as it used to be ... Shall I drive you anywhere, Elise? You are leaving your reticule.--By the way, I forgot to tell you the cream of the business about Florian's poor wife, as you call her, the Englishwoman. She and Madame de Vigerie were bosom friends at one time--isn't it amusing?" They rustled away.

"Madame is ill!" said the young milliner anxiously. "Shall I get a glass of water--some eau-de-vie? If Madame would but sit down again!"

Horatia, as white as death, was standing up, supporting herself by the back of her chair. Seeing that she did not even appear to understand what was said to her, the girl hastily fetched an older assistant. Horatia's maid was also summoned from her errands in another part of the shop, but by the time she arrived her mistress appeared to have recovered herself, and was able, in a few minutes, to return to her carriage.

Once there, deaf to the solicitous inquiries of Josephine, and almost, indeed, ignorant of her own purpose, Horatia gave the order to drive to Madame de Vigerie's house in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, She had no conscious thoughts during the short transit. There was no time for them--no room in her head, round which a piercing band seemed to be drawn, suffocating them. But when the carriage began to slacken something external to herself said:

"You cannot go in. Ask at the porter's lodge if he is still there, and say you have come to drive him home. Then you will know!"

And she told the footman this. He disappeared under the archway. It might yet all be a horrible lie. The concierge would be astonished, would tell the man that M. de la Roche-Guyon never came there now.

The footman came back to the carriage and said respectfully:

"M. le Comte left about a quarter of an hour ago, Madame."

"I am too late, then," said Horatia quietly. "Home, please."

*(2)*

Four or five dried specimens of rare seaweeds, neatly fastened with slips of paper to little cards, lay before the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon on his writing-table, and he was agreeably occupied in identifying them, for he was contemplating a monograph on the algae of France. He would shortly have to ring for a light, but, like all absorbed persons, he preferred working under conditions which were momentarily becoming worse to getting up to the bell. There is always a spark of hope, never realised, that the decline of daylight will somehow be arrested.

However, though Emmanuel would not interrupt himself, he was interrupted, with the last seaweed under a magnifying glass, by a knock.

"Come in," he called out, rather vexed. On removing his gaze from the brown fronds, he beheld his sister-in-law.

"O, come in, my dear sister," he said, springing to his feet. "Permit me to clear you a chair. I fear there is not an empty one in the room. It is rather dark--I will ring for lights."

"Please do not trouble," returned Horatia. "I only wanted to ask you a trifling question.--How far is the chateau of Rosdael from Kerfontaine?"

Emmanuel, already on his way to the bell, stopped, looking surprised. "Rosdael? Do you mean where old M. des Charnieres used to live?"

"Used to live!" repeated Horatia like a flash. "Why do you say 'used to live'? Does he not live there now?"

"He died recently," replied the Marquis, drifting back almost unconsciously to his writing-table, the bell still unrung. "What an extraordinary thing!" he continued with fresh interest, "that you should mention him, for I have just been buying some early botanical works from the sale of his library. They are somewhere here." He stooped to one of the many piles of books on the floor.

Horatia sank on the nearest chair, book-laden as it was.

"What do you mean, Emmanuel, by 'recently'?" she asked. "Last week--last month?"

The Marquis raised himself, looking thoughtful and a little puzzled. "I think it was in August, when I was with you at Kerfontaine, though I did not hear of it till afterwards, and I was so sorry, because if I had known I might have gone over and bought----"

"Are you sure it was August?" interrupted Horatia leaning forward.

"If you want to know the exact date," said Emmanuel beginning to hunt about afresh, "I think I can find you the sale catalogue of his books. He had a wonderful collection, mostly inherited. I remember having seen him once. He was a great miser; nothing would induce him to pay his night's lodging at a hotel, so he bought a house at every stage to Paris."

"Yes, I have heard that story before," said Horatia in a strange voice, which the Marquis was too busy to notice.

"Here it is," he said triumphantly. "You see, he died on August the 12th." And he handed her, over the writing-table, a thin ill-printed little pamphlet, the catalogue of the library of M. Adolphe des Charnieres, chevalier de St. Louis, decede le 12 Aout 1831.

"I am sure those books of his are here somewhere," he said, seeing the fixity with which his sister-in-law was staring at the catalogue. "I think they would interest you if I could only find them." And he made another dive floorwards.

"Please do not trouble--another time..." came in a breathless voice from Horatia, and when Emmanuel turned, she had gone, taking the catalogue with her.

"Dear me," thought the Marquis, "I must tell her that it is no use trying to buy any books from that list; they were all sold, every one." And at last he rang for a light.

*(3)*

With the catalogue of M. des Charnieres' books still clutched tightly in her hands, Horatia was standing perfectly still in the middle of the half-furnished nursery. She did not know when Armand would return, nor how much more she would have of this sick agony. Why she had carried it to this place, where it seemed a thousand times more poignant, she did not know.

It was yesterday that she had sat here by the fire; yesterday that she had had a happy dream; yesterday that Armand, out of solicitude, had awakened her. On the table lay the pattern of the little cap for which she had been to get the lace; over the mantel-piece the Madonna gazed with absorbed, serene eyes at her Son....

Armand's step at the door--already.

"They said you wanted to see me at once," said he, coming briskly in. "I was sure I should find you here. But--whatever is the matter?"

Horatia looked at his handsome, alert face, and did not hasten to answer. Then she said, "I know now why Madame de Vigerie and I are never to meet!"

"But you have always known it!" exclaimed her husband, with every sign of amazement, "Politics----"

She checked him. "Don't say it again--spare me that! Politics! And I have only to go into a milliner's to hear your 'politics' discussed!"

A demeanour of kindly calm descended on Armand. "My dear, you ought not to be standing. If you will only sit down we will go into this. I must insist." He pushed forward the big armchair from the fire, and, partly because she could indeed no longer stand, Horatia sank into it. "Now, tell me what you have been hearing in the milliner's?"

"What is the use," asked Horatia, "of being polite and considerate in private and humiliating me in public? I, your wife, have only to enter Herbault's to hear the whole story of your connection with Madame de Vigerie, from its beginning in Brittany this summer, under my eyes--to hear how you go to see her every day, how ... O, I don't know how I bore it!" She buried her face in her shaking hands.

Armand bent over her. "For Heaven's sake don't agitate yourself so, Horatia! Everybody is gossipped about in Paris, you must know that, surely! I give you my word of honour that it is false. I did not think you were the sort of woman to listen to such things."

"Nor did I think--once--that you were the sort of man to do them."

"I have not," said he steadily. "Madame de Vigerie is of a reputation as unsullied as you yourself."

Horatia smiled very bitterly. "Do you usually leave her house as early as you did this afternoon?"

"Not being in the habit of going there regularly, I have naturally no 'usual' hour for leaving," countered Armand.

"Ah, I forgot--you never go there now because of 'politics'; it is too dangerous!"

He was not to be caught so. "I did not say that I never went," he replied coolly. "I have been occasionally. Affairs demanded it. As a matter of fact I was there this afternoon."

"I knew that," said Horatia.

"I thought so," said her husband to himself. "May I ask how you knew it?"

"After what those women said, I came to see."

The young man shrugged his shoulders. "In spite of all my adjurations and your promise! Well, let us hope that nobody saw you!"

Horatia gave a little gasp of anger. "And what of the people who have seen you going there?"

"A man must take some risks," replied the Comte indifferently. "I knew that there was a certain amount of danger, but I did not expect that you, of all people, would be the person to denounce me."

His adroitness in constantly pushing her from her position was maddening. "O, if I were only a man!" she broke out. "Do you really think that I am still the dupe, as I have been so long, of your pitiful 'politics'? It is all lies--lies everywhere; they choke me--lies here, lies in Brittany----did that woman ever really have any letters from the Duchesse de Berry--were not all your interviews with her just a cloak? Why, I could almost believe the Regent herself to be a lie, too--a lie incarnate, as you are!"

"Horatia, for God's sake control yourself," said Armand, rather anxiously. "You do not know what you are saying, and this agitation is very bad for you."

"For the child, you mean! How can you pretend to care for me--except that falsehood comes so easily to you? She helps you, I suppose, that treacherous woman, to make up these plots for keeping me in the dark?"

Armand stiffened. "Please do not speak of Madame de Vigerie like that! You have no right--none whatever, on my soul."

Horatia laughed. "It is your duty to champion her. Which of you invented the story about your visit to Rosdael last August?"

"Rosdael? I do not know what you mean," said Armand; but he looked uneasy.

"Is it possible that you have forgotten the interesting account you gave me of your visit to old M. des Charnieres, and how he received you, that day when I thought I had seen you riding near St. Clair, and was fool enough to believe you when you said you had not done so? Whichever of you invented that tale to gull me with blundered badly, did they not, when they arranged for you a political interview with a man who had been dead for nearly a week? You had better take this to your accomplice when next you 'run the risk' of seeing her!"

The young man mechanically took the catalogue which she held out to him, no doubt inwardly cursing the antiquarian tastes of his brother, and there was silence for a moment while he looked frowningly at its date.

"You cannot, I imagine," pursued Horatia, "say anything to that. It was a pity that you did not know that he was dead; still, it was very unlikely that I should ever find out."

Armand lifted his head. "As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "I did know that M. des Charnieres was dead. I will tell you exactly what happened. I started to ride to Rosdael, not knowing of his recent decease, when I had gone two or three miles I heard of it, and turned back. It was necessary, owing to this check to our plans, that I should see Madame de Vigerie at once. I told you the lie--for I admit that it was a lie ... you will misunderstand me, I know--but as a precaution."

"Precaution!" exclaimed Horatia. "Precaution against what?"

Armand made a gesture. "Ma chere, against the very attitude which you are now taking up. It seems it was not unneeded."

There was a touch of faint derision and of triumph in his tone. How was it that he always got within her guard? Horatia's head swam for a moment; it was like a duel, in which she knew her skill inferior.

"No, I do not understand you. How could I ever need to be told a lie, for any reason?"

"Well, because---- Did Eulalie de Beaulieu, when she was at Kerfontaine, ever put any ideas into your head about Madame de Vigerie and me?"

"Certainly not," replied Horatia haughtily. "And for one thing I should not have listened to her."

"No, you only listen to unknown scandalmongers in milliners' shops, is it not?" riposted her husband like lightning. "It was against just such lying tongues as those to whom you apparently gave this easy credence that I was trying to protect Madame de Vigerie. But I was foolish in my choice of weapons. It was senseless of me to lie to you that day, and I sincerely ask your pardon."

Horatia looked very fixedly at him. "A lie cannot be so easily wiped out," she said. "You seem to hold them very lightly, so that I see you will think nothing of telling me others--have told them, doubtless, many, many times. Do not tell me another now, the greatest of all, for I shall not believe it."

Armand drew himself up, the pattern of slandered honour.

"I cannot accuse myself of what I have not done," he said with quiet dignity. "I admit that things look very black against me; but that is chiefly due to my own incredible folly, and if you were generous you would believe me when I swear to you, on the crucifix if you like--no, that is nothing to you--that there is not, and never has been, anything between me and Madame de Vigerie. If I cannot make you believe me I am sorry, for your sake as well as mine; but it is the truth, nevertheless."

"The truth," exclaimed Horatia, "when day after day you have gone on deceiving me, pretending that you never saw the Vicomtesse, pretending that I must not see her--I do not know why you did that, since you seem to have less sense of shame than I thought--pretending that you were so concerned for my comfort..."

She stopped abruptly, very white, with dilated eyes sind a hand at her heart.

"I begin to see," she said in a strangled voice. "You wanted an heir. After that it did not matter. O, how I loathe myself...." And she began to sob, putting her hands wildly to her head. "Take the picture down ... I don't want it there ... take the child away..." She struggled to get up, but as Armand, greatly alarmed, bent over her to help her she shrank back, trying to keep him off, and crying, "Don't touch me, don't touch me! ... I hate you! ... I hate your child! I hate it, I hate it!"

Armand had the sense to dash to the bell and to pull it furiously.

Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon was born next day, at half past eleven in the morning.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*(1)*

Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White, Paris, November 28th, 1831.

"My dear Polly,

"Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at present. I have not had time these weeks so much as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl, and you were always one to want to know things from the beginning. The precious babe is well, thank God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which are enough to scare a Christian woman. Will you believe it, before that dear child was many hours old, with Miss Horatia at death's door as you may say, they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as I put away myself with his dear mother looking on, not so much as two days before, all wasted. When his Reverence came over I did think it would be done again properly, but no! A fine string of names he has, poor mite, but I will not try to write them. Master Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to hear that Josephine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte this and Monsieur le Vicomte that.

"But Josephine can't show off any of her airs now, for we are all put to the right about by this Madam Carry. Even the old Madam was ready to go down on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he would have given her a pound a minute. It was a pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn't come already, but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to take us all by surprise. Only the day before she was worrying her pretty head counting over all them English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing like, and she says to me, 'Martha, are you sure there is enough?' and I says, 'Saving your presence, more than enough for twins twice over.' And there they are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen Indian. It's pitiful to see him.

"The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said, 'Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?' and she says, looking strange, 'No, Martha,' and it seemed to me she had forgotten all about it. Then I went for a turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six o'clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might have been St. Giles' Fair, and all of them jibbering and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what had happened, but just then the old Madam's lady came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my poor lamb.

* * * * *

"It was sixteen hours before the babe was born; then for three days she was give over, and they sent a messenger to fetch his Reverence. I will say that they spared no expense, and that they took on terrible. As you know, the Count, for all his fair words, has never been a favourite of mine, but I tell you I was sorry for that young man. He was scared pretty nearly out of his life at first, and then it seemed to me that the family looked pretty black at him, and it's my belief they had cause. That Jackanapes Jules, the Count's valet, told me for gospel that the Count and she were shut up for a long time in the nursery after she came in that afternoon, and it's thought they had words.

"Well, as I was saying, his Reverence arrived, and I took good care that things should be to his liking, because, for all that the house is full of duchesses and marquises as they call themselves, they don't know how to make a body comfortable as _I_ call comfortable. The poor lamb seemed to cling to him like, but I don't know that she ever so much as asked to see the Count; so I drew my own conclusions.

"But that's five weeks ago now, and his Reverence went home again, as you know, and now, though the doctor says she may sit up on a couch a little every day it seems as if she couldn't make the effort. She just lies there, white as a lily, so that it's pitiful to see her and do you know, what's worse, she won't take no notice of that pretty dear. And here all these months she's been wearing herself to death getting the nurseries ready as if he'd been a royal prince, and she, who never had a needle in her hand, sewing all day at his little clothes. The Lord knows best, I suppose, but it makes my heart ache."

*(2)*

The planets of larger bulk which revolved round Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la Roche-Guyon as their central sun were disturbed in their courses, for Toinette, the least of these luminaries, had just rushed into the nurseries to say that M. le Comte was on his way thither. It was not the first time that this comet had impinged upon their orbits, but it was the first time that he had disturbed such a galaxy of subsidiary lights. Josephine, who had no business to be there at all, slipped out by a side door; Toinette, blushing deeply, paused but to make a reverence and followed her; but Martha, with merely the slightest sketch of a curtsey, folded her arms and remained placidly in the background. The buxom Breton nurse, rising majestically from her chair (the great consequence of the burden in her arms warranting her in refraining from any movement of respect) waited, as Armand approached, with the air of a smiling priestess.

The centre of the solar system was looking that morning more than usually careworn. He was not asleep; on the contrary some knotty problem of existence or pre-existence was engaging his whole mind. His worried expression, however, slightly relaxed as his father bent to look at him, and his puckered face broke into a different series of puckers.

"Aha! he recognises M. le Comte!" said the Breton delightedly. "He smiles at M. son pere!" (This was a very free rendering of Maurice's facial transformation.) "Let M. le Comte give him his finger, and he will see how strong he is."

The clutch of the tiny hand round Armand's forefinger seemed to please him, for he said, "Tiens, Maurice, do not damage me for life!"

"He resembles M. son pere astonishingly," pursued Madame Carre. "Probably his hair will be the hair of Madame la Comtesse, but who could doubt that his eyes are those of M. le Comte?"

The eyes in question, which were indeed more blue than grey, were now staring up unwinkingly and rather disconcertingly at the young man.

"Dost thou recognise me, Maurice?" asked Armand. "Thou art thyself unlike anyone or anything that I have ever seen. Is it possible that I am reminded of a monkey?"

"M. le Comte would not wish to hold him?" suggested the nurse.

"Si," answered Armand. "Give him to me. He will not break, hein?"

He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he held his son in a manner to call forth praises from the guardian. Maurice still studied him, and was carried over to Martha at the window.

"Well, my good Martha," said Armand, "what do you think of him?"

"He takes to you, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet weightily. (Never, though she sometimes accorded her "lamb" a title, did she address the source of that title otherwise.) "And there's no doubt he has your eyes."

"He has need to take to someone, has he not?" observed Armand.

And though it had given Martha "a turn" to see the poor innocent in his father's arms when he had never been in his mother's, she rose in defence, knowing the Breton ignorant of English.

"She'll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she's stronger, you'll see, and be as fond of him as never was, she as wanted him so badly.... Will he go back to his Nana now, the precious?"

"Martha," said the Comte, surrendering his offspring, "never buy your bonnets at Herbault's. But you don't, I suppose."

"Certainly not, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet, in some indignation. "I makes them myself, Sir, not liking the French style, saving your presence.... Here he is, Mrs. Carry."

And, able then to ponder Armand's cryptic utterance, she stood staring after him as he left the nursery, and thought, "Poor young gentleman, it's pitiful! Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to roost." Nevertheless, from that day she had softer thoughts of "the Count."

*(3)*

All these agitations had, as may well be imagined, reverberated nowhere more loudly than in the apartments of Victorine, Duchesse Douairiere de la Roche-Guyon. During the crisis she had performed the customary miracle known as "rising to the occasion"; to her had come the terrified Armand, the distressed Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had directed, as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which were to guide the family ship once more into smooth water. Now, a veteran admiral, she a little took her ease, though not relaxing her vigilance, for, to change the metaphor, there was something savouring of a mutiny below decks, and the mutineer was the English wife.

The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late to pay attention to that curious soul of hers, which seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment only when her body had received too much of material, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this December morning, had not found her desirous of spiritual intercourse. He sat there now by her bedside, his fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges enamel which enshrined her false teeth--but this he did not know--his thin, refined prelate's face a little flushed from the heat of the room after the cold outside, while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable lady's denunciation of her favourite grandson.

"Not," said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of view, "that I pronounce judgment upon his affair with Madame de Vigerie--that is more in your province, Prosper--but that I cannot conceive his not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper of it coming to Horatia's ears at this time. All Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought to have known what the effect would be. Heaven knows we do not want another secluded wife in the family ... No, Emmanuel, you know I do not blame you in the least ... That she will scarcely speak to Armand is natural, but it is not natural that she should refuse to take the slightest interest in the child. (Prosper, do leave off tapping your fingers like that!) As you know, it was never my wish that she should nurse it, but though events have made that impossible, I should at least desire----Ah, here is Armand himself. Good-morning, grandson!"

"Good-morning, bonne maman," said the young man, saluting her extended claw. "Good-morning, Prosper. I suppose you are sitting on my case as usual?"

"Do not be flippant, Armand," said the Duchesse with majesty. "You ought to be on your knees thanking the saints that the child is as healthy as it is, and that your wife is not in her grave."

Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and looked across the bed at Prosper.

"If you could make some novel contribution to the joint sermon, cousin," he said pleasantly, "I should be grateful. The old text is getting threadbare."

"I don't want to preach you a sermon, my dear Armand," replied the priest. "I think recent events must have done that."

"I will tell you what recent events have done for me," retorted the young man with vigour. "They have shown me the truth of the English saying, 'as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.' You drive me, between you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the lover of the lady to whom you assign me. I should be no worse off--in fact considerably better."

"Armand!" protested his grandmother, with prudery so manifestly histrionic that even Prosper turned away to hide a smile.

*(4)*

"Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his Martha, and would he like to go to his pretty Mamma?" crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to and fro in her arms. Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous embrace of his foster-mother, gurgled assent.

"Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a beautiful sleepy sleep?" continued his faithful admirer, hurrying along the corridor in the direction of her mistress's bedroom. Arrived there she stopped, listened, and knocked.

It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an armchair. She did this religiously, according to the doctor's orders, from three to four, then wearily allowed herself to be put to bed again. Now she could receive a few visitors. Members of the family, and connections, came to offer their congratulations, but the conversation was extremely one-sided, and Martha would not permit her charge even to say "Yes" and "No" for longer than ten minutes at a time. Even the Duchesse, when she paid her state visit, found herself, to her indignation, back again in her own apartments almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing the promised emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had time to make the presentation in person.

It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence had prevented this, for her granddaughter-in-law, just glancing at the jewels, told Martha to put them away and never to let her see them again. She had cried after the episode, and for a week no further visits had been allowed. Every day Armand came to kiss her hand. His appearance seemed to make no difference one way or the other. Horatia would say, in answer to his enquiries, "I am quite well, thank you," and turn her head, so that there was nothing left for him to do but to go away. Her son she had scarcely seen, and her indifference amounted to a positive distaste for his society.

Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat, jolly Breton woman, to whom Maurice owed the preservation of his tiny life, was invited to exhibit her charge, but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and merely said, "Please ask that woman to go away. I cannot bear her great cap." Martha regretfully obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to the exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her mistress's temperature had risen. That was three weeks earlier, and although Horatia's bitterness and apathy continued the doctors had given it as their opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement. They were agreed that it would be a great step in the right direction if Madame la Comtesse could be induced to take some interest in her baby. Martha had asked and received permission to try again, and she now stood with Maurice in her arms summoning up courage to enter. A fresh gurgle gave the necessary impetus; she turned the handle of the door and went in.

Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her hands folded before her.

"Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he shall then," said Martha, laying down the bundle in Horatia's lap. Horatia started, but with the child already on her knee it was impossible to resist.

"Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke the fire. He wouldn't cry, no, he wouldn't, Mother's poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.

Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told, and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature, who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a smile. The fire needed a great deal of making up, and as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that there were handkerchiefs which that careless Josephine had not yet put away. Horatia appeared afraid to move, while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of quarters.

"Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you think he is my baby at all?"

"Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so! Whose else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence's own? Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."

But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself an orphan, began to cry. In an instant the wily Martha had slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind her.

"My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards wrote to Polly. "But the precious did not cry for long." And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later, she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending over the child in her lap. She half turned, and raised a warning finger. Maurice was fast asleep.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*(1)*

It was New Year's Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was doing up a small packet. She believed absolutely in a system of rewards and punishments, and she thought that when people had done what was right they should be suitably recompensed. This, therefore, was a present of five hundred francs for Martha.

The doctor called in to attend an attack which the Dowager now permitted herself had given it as his opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon had to thank the English attendant for the recovery of Madame la Comtesse. It was three weeks now since Martha's fortunate experiment, and a marked change had taken place in its subject. Horatia was beginning to be about again as usual. She drove out daily, and was receiving visitors. She had entirely dropped her peculiar attitude towards the child, and was behaving like a reasonable being, far more reasonably, indeed, than the Duchesse could have expected. To the Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no more objectionable than her absorption before his birth, her extravagant preparations for his advent, her intention of having an English nurse for him. Providence, however, had defeated the latter project, and had caused that treasure Madame Carre to be installed. And the latitude which Armand had allowed to Horatia's fancies for redecoration and upholstery of the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness, for which she had a considerable respect. No doubt the young scamp was glad to see his wife so harmlessly occupied, so long as he had his own freedom. It was true that the consequences of his indulgence in that freedom had been rather disastrous, but, though the Duchesse could not be got to believe his protestations of innocence, she no longer treated him to homilies on the subject, considering that the conditions of his menage were improving. For not only did Horatia, though she visited the nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the regime established by the Duchesse herself, but she had consented to appear publicly with Armand next week, so, evidently, the breach was healed. Could anything be more satisfactory?

The old lady finished sealing up the packet for Martha. It then occurred to her to reward the Blessed Virgin also, and she wrote an order on her bank for one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's charities.

*(2)*

In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and Comtesse were not prospering as the dispenser of rewards upstairs believed. At the very moment when the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia was on the point of doing something she had long intended to do.

Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms full of flowers.

"I have brought you some lilac," he said, laying down a sheaf of white blossoms, and with them, almost furtively, a leather case which, from its shape, contained a necklace. "Here are some roses, too. I thought you might like them as a New Year's gift for Maurice, It is his first New Year's Day."

"You are very kind," replied his wife evenly. "If you will ring for Josephine I will tell her to put them in the nursery."

Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell. Then he moved away without ringing it, murmuring something about taking the flowers to Maurice himself.

"Armand," said his wife, looking at the unopened case, "I think I would rather that you did not give me presents. I am afraid that you do not understand."

"Understand what?" asked the young man uneasily. "I understand, my dear, that you are getting better at last, and that you are more beautiful than ever."

Horatia motioned him back. "I am afraid that is not true," she said in a very matter-of-fact way. "Will you sit down? I have been waiting to be strong enough to have a talk with you."

Armand did not sit down. "I see that you have not forgiven me for my ever-to-be-regretted deception," he said, regarding her with some apprehension.

"I do not think that there is much question of forgiving, or of not forgiving," replied Horatia. "I really do not mind if you deceive me or no; I am past that now. Since my illness something has happened to me--I am different. I believe that the last thing I said before I fainted was that I hated you. I take that back; it is not true. One cannot hate a ... a person who does not exist ... I would rather you understood."

"Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly plain," said Armand with a rather forced lightness. He had broken off a stem of the lilac and holding it in his hand, was gazing at it. "But I assure you that I do not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!"

Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full. "Then you still do not believe me?"

"I cannot I am sorry," said his wife in a low voice, and, leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. She was no longer, as before, a duellist needing to see what parry her antagonist would next use; she was a judge, pronouncing sentence. Armand said something under his breath, breaking up the lilac stem.

But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat up. "I have been so humiliated already," she resumed, "that I cannot bear any more. Must I make myself more explicit? Take your freedom; do what you like with it. I shall ask no questions."

"You are proposing, then, to make a scandal," returned her husband, lifting angry eyes. "That will not do much to silence the other gossip, which you found so objectionable, will it?"

"That story does not touch me now," said Horatia. "And there shall be no scandal, I promise you that. In public I shall be your wife. I will do my duty by your child. When we have to appear together I do not think you will have any cause to complain of me."

Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac into the fire. "For the last time, Horatia, will you believe me?" he said with passion. "I have given you my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed? I have been patient, for you have been very ill--you are ill now, or you would not create this causeless and ridiculous situation."

"O, do not delude yourself with that idea," returned his wife. "I am quite well now, and I know what I am saying, and I mean it. I have not been near death without learning many things. I am sorry if the situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more than that. I do not want you to speak any more about forgiveness. I can never believe you, and that is the end of the matter."

Armand was whiter even than she. But the armour of weakness and weariness which, unrealising, she wore, was potent. He controlled himself with obvious difficulty.

"That is your last word, Horatia?"

"Yes, I think so," said she wearily. "Would you mind going now, and telling Martha to come to me."

"Soit!" said the Comte between his teeth, and walked to the door.

"There is one thing more," said the tired, even voice. "Would you be so good as to explain matters to Madame de Vigerie. She has called twice to see me. Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet learned how to lie."

It is enormously to Armand's credit that he did not bang the door.

*(3)*

As soon as her husband's footsteps had died away Horatia got up rather unsteadily from her chair and turned the key in the lock. Somehow or other victory had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life. She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened at her own success. She was not accustomed to compromise with her conscience, and she had an uneasy feeling that she was not acting quite rightly--and yet how otherwise could she go on living in the same house with Armand? He ought to be thankful that she had not insisted on returning to her father. Now, of course, he would go at once to that woman!

It was curious that her jealous hate should still be mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend should still have power to wound her, when greater things than friendship were at stake, but she had been very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted her from the first time that she had seen her. For no other woman before had she ever had quite the same feeling.... Well, it only proved that even liars could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said over and over again that no woman could be true to another. So that was the last of her illusions. There was nothing left to live for, and every day she was getting stronger.

A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor, but in the short interval there came the cry of an infant. Horatia sat up intent and listening--half rose, and leant back again. She was determined not to yield to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and hear Maurice cry. There were plenty of people to quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well get used to crying ... It was no good. She got up, unlocked her door, and listened. The sound had ceased.

Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of repulsion for the baby. All the strange obsession of her illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had had the temerity to leave him on her lap. The living warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms. He was Armand's son, and she was determined not to forget it--Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to her from the beginning. With the shock of her husband's treachery, the realisation that the unborn child was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into her consciousness. It had wrung from her the cry, "I hate you, I hate your child!" She did not hate Armand now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her dreams. He was Armand's son, a stranger and a foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition. He would grow up French in nurture, French in thought; he would grow up like his father. And this was the child who was to have been welcomed into a world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother. She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to hear French spoken, where only English was to have been, and to know that the press against the wall remained closed, because his nurses could not or would not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there lovingly so short a time before. The beautiful copy of the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might have been.

*(4)*

The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's visits at the end of October was not known to Madame de Vigerie for some days. Then she had a note from him telling her the news, but without any hint of what had occasioned the premature arrival of his heir. The Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia's account (though understanding that she was now out of danger), and she went herself to the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would have been received had Armand allowed them to reach his wife's sick-room. When Madame de Vigerie heard that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself was the only friend with the slightest claim to real intimacy with the English girl. Much to her disappointment a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse was too tired to see her that day. There was, however, no hope expressed that she would call again, and Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.

Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand's prohibition. As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about the necessity of which she had more than once had doubts. She was sure now, from what she had heard, that the reason for the secrecy of Armand's visits had gone--but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too. For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him. And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss him more and more intensely, to hope that each succeeding winter's day might bring him, as of old.

The winter's day which brought him, at length, was the second of the New Year. Paris was ringing with the festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie's salon was full of gifts and flowers. Into this warm, lamplit, scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon, pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.

Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she was glad.

"My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both her hands, "where have you been these years--these centuries? And how is Horatia?"

"She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips. "And I ... O, I have been playing the devoted husband ... to very small purpose."

After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the whole story was not difficult. Laurence de Vigerie sat motionless while, pacing restlessly to and fro, the young man unfolded it to her. All his bitterly hurt self-esteem was in the tale.

"I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you," he ended. "You see what wreckage I have made. I have alienated my wife for ever; I have involved you in a scandal. It seems to me that there is nothing left but to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine."

"I think Horatia should have believed you," said Madame de Vigerie in rather a hard voice.

"I had lied too much," answered Armand, and there was silence. A petal from a hothouse flower fell on the shining table at the Vicomtesse's elbow. She took it up and began to twist it in her fingers. At the other side of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his hands.