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Anna had promised that she would consider dates and settle details as soon as Madame de Chantelle and her grandson had been reconciled, and Darrow was eager to go into the question at once, since it was necessary that the preparations for his marriage should go forward as rapidly as possible. But when she finally joined him her first word was for the younger lovers.
She was impatient to have the meeting over, and glad that Darrow was obliged to leave her at the station in order to look up a colleague at the Embassy. She dreaded his seeing Owen again, and yet dared not tell him so, and to ensure his remaining away she mentioned an urgent engagement with her dress-maker and a long list of commissions to be executed for Madame de Chantelle.
Madame de Chantelle looked plaintively at her sturdy monitress. "You don't expect me not to ask if she's got a family?" "No; nor to think the worse of her if she hasn't. The fact that she's an orphan ought, with your ideas, to be a merit. You won't have to invite her father and mother to Givre!" "Adelaide Adelaide!" the mistress of Givre lamented.
On the next day but one, indeed, the 8th of September, 1523, whilst the Bishop of Autun was kept prisoner by the troops sent forward to Chantelle, the constable sallied from it about one in the morning, taking with him five-and-twenty or thirty thousand crowns of gold sewn up in from twelve to fifteen jackets, each of which was intrusted to a man in his train.
"But if you admit that they ARE prejudices ?" "There are prejudices and prejudices. My mother, of course, got hers from Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as much in their place in this house as the pot-pourri in your hawthorn jar. They preserve a social tradition of which I should be sorry to lose the least perfume.
"But surely there's no danger of that just now? Madame de Chantelle tells me that you've at last put your hand on a perfect governess " Anna, without answering, glanced away from him toward her daughter. "It's lucky, at any rate," Darrow continued, "that Madame de Chantelle thinks her so." "Oh, I think very highly of her too." "Highly enough to feel quite satisfied to leave her with Effie?" "Yes.
"You've been awfully kind about pretending to." She laughed. "You don't believe me? You must remember I had your grandmother to consider." "Yes: and my father and Effie, I suppose and the outraged shades of Givre!" He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: "Do you likewise include the late Monsieur de Chantelle?" His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust.
He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had known her much less well, and that he had already, on this point, convinced Anna of his inability to pronounce an opinion. Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. "Your opinion of Mrs. Murrett is enough! I don't suppose you pretend to conceal THAT? And heaven knows what other unspeakable people she's been mixed up with.
This maidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de Chantelle so favourably that she was disposed for the first time to talk over Owen's projects; and as every human event translated itself for her into terms of social and domestic detail, Anna had perforce to travel the same round again.
She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a sufficient reason for remaining upstairs when the motor came to the door and Miss Painter and Sophy Viner were borne off in it; sufficient also for sending word to Madame de Chantelle that she would not come down till after luncheon. Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down on her sofa and stared before her into darkness...
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