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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Eight guns are going to shoot partridges here on the 15th of October, and Augustus will be very pleased if you will make the ninth," I wrote. Could anything be more bête? "Please wire reply, and believe me, yours sincerely " I hesitated again. Must I sign myself "Ambrosine de Calincourt Gurrage"? The strangest reluctance came over me.
"How very white and thin you are looking, dear!" she said, as we sat together in her sitting-room the first afternoon I arrived. "You are not the same person as the very young girl who danced at the Yeomanry ball in May. How old are you, Ambrosine?" "I was twenty in October." "Twenty years old! Only twenty years old, and with that sad face! Nothing in life ought to make one sad at twenty.
Yes, Ambrosine Eustasie, for me to-morrow there is also the guillotine; and perhaps I, too, could walk up the steps smiling if I were allowed a rose to keep off the smell of the common people; Augustus's mother uses patchouli. No one can possibly imagine the unpleasantness of a honey-moon until they have tried it. It is no wonder one is told nothing at all about it.
Ambrosine, say you forgive me." He took my hand. His hands are horrid to touch coarse and damp. I shuddered involuntarily. He looked pained at that. A dark-red flush came over all his face. He squared his shoulders and got over the window-sill again. "You cold statue!" he said, spitefully. "I will leave you." "Go," was all I said, and I did not move an inch.
A huge covey came over at the moment, but the voices and the bright-blue dress attracted their attention, and they all wheeled off to the right, so that, but for two stray birds killed by Antony, this end of the line found the drive a blank. Augustus's rage knew no bounds. He came up to me as if it was my fault. "Take that old woman home this moment, Ambrosine," he said, furiously.
Oh, dear grandmamma! if I could save you a moment's sorrow you know I would. When I said good-bye to her she held me close and kissed me. "Ambrosine," she said, "I shall have started upon my journey before you come back; you must not grieve or be sad. My last advice to you, my child, is to remember life is full of compensations, as you will find.
Soon the daylight faded and the servants brought lamps. "It is almost five," she said, at last "What a happy afternoon we have had! I know you ever so much better now, dear. Well, I suppose the time has come to put on tea-gowns and descend to see how affairs are progressing." I rose. "I am going to call you Ambrosine," she said, and she kissed me.
She has grown terribly feeble, and has twice had fainting-fits like the one that changed my destiny. I believe she is remaining alive simply by strength of will and that she will die when all is over. She has given me the greatest treasure of her life, the miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie. I have it here by my side for my very own.
I can never get accustomed to his calling me Ambrosine it always jars, as if one suddenly heard a shopman taking this liberty. It is equally unpleasant as "little woman" or "dearie," both of which besprinkle all his sentences. He has not a mind that makes it possible to have any conversation with him.
Then I told him of my telegram, and I know he, too, felt glad that last night we had parted as we had. "Ambrosine, listen to me," he said, "I will not try to see you, but if you want anything in the world done for you, promise to let me do it." I promised. "There is just one thing I want to know," I said.
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