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"My nephew does not love Charlotte enough to ride to Saint-Nazaire after her," said the old blind woman to Mariotte, who was clearing the breakfast-table. "No; but a fine lady, a marquise, has come to Les Touches, and I'll warrant he's after her; that's the way at his age," said Mariotte. "They'll kill him," said Mademoiselle du Guenic.
The Abbe Gudin, the Comte de Bauvan, and the Baron du Guenic were consulting how best to help the marquis in rejecting these extravagant demands, for they felt the position of the young leader to be extremely delicate.
It is difficult to understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly it might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister. Mariotte's wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin's, three hundred. But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have induced either to leave the Guenic household.
Mariotte had made galettes of buckwheat, the baroness produced a tea-caddy. The illustrious house of du Guenic served a little supper before the departure of its guests, consisting of fresh butter, fruits, and cream, in addition to Mariotte's cakes; for which festal event issued from their wrappings a silver teapot and some beautiful old English china sent to the baroness by her aunts.
From a feeling of truly Breton pride, Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, glad of the supremacy accorded to her old friend Zephirine and the du Guenics, always showed herself honored by her relations with Madame du Guenic and her sister-in-law.
"I shall lecture Calyste to-morrow morning," said the baron, whom the others had thought asleep. "I do not wish to go out of this world without seeing my grandson, a little pink and white Guenic with a Breton cap on his head." "Calyste doesn't say a word," said old Zephirine, "and there's no making out what's the matter with him. He doesn't eat; I don't see what he lives on.
To-day I shall have my way, and I mean that he shall stay." "Already, my dear!" said Camille, with cutting irony. The marquise blushed. "Stay, Monsieur du Guenic," said Camille, in the tone of a queen. Beatrix became cold and hard, contradictory in tone, epigrammatic, and almost rude to Calyste, whom Felicite sent home to play mouche with Charlotte de Kergarouet.
"Did you tell him that our dear Charlotte was to arrive to-day?" said Zephirine, turning to her sister-in-law. "No," replied the baroness. "I thought perhaps he was going to meet her," said Mademoiselle du Guenic, slyly. "If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt, he will have plenty of opportunities to see her," said his mother.
It is, in matters of the heart, a repetition of the fable of the woodman calling upon Death, we soon ask Certainty to leave us blind. One morning, about two weeks after the first crisis, Sabine received this terrible letter: Guerande. To Madame la Baronne du Guenic: My dear Daughter, Your aunt Zephirine and I are lost in conjectures about the dressing-table of which you tell us in your letter.
She would have parted you from Madame du Guenic without the possibility of return, and then she would have left you in the lurch without remorse. In short, that woman is as incomplete for vice as she is for virtue." "I don't agree with you, Maxime," said La Palferine. "I think she will make the most delightful mistress of a salon in all Paris."
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