“Why, no, my dear madam,” replied Lucan laughingly, “I know perfectly the history of my family, and I can guarantee you—­”

“Rest assured, my friend, that some one has been killed in it—­in old times.  You know how little they troubled themselves about those things formerly!”

Julia’s letters to her mother were frequent.  It was a regular journal of travels written helter-skelter, with a striking originality of style, in which the vivacity of the impressions was corrected by that shade of haughty irony which was a peculiarity of the writer.  Julia spoke rather briefly of her husband, but always in pleasant terms.  There was generally a rapid and kindly postscript addressed to Monsieur de Lucan.

Monsieur de Moras was more chary of descriptions.  He seemed to see no one but his wife in Italy.  He extolled her beauty, still further enhanced, he said, by the contact of all those marvels of art with which she was becoming impregnated; he praised her extraordinary taste, her intelligence, and even her good disposition.  In this latter respect, she was extremely matured, and he found her almost too staid and too grave for her age.  These particulars delighted Clotilde, and finished instilling into her heart a peace she had never yet enjoyed.

The count’s letters were not less reassuring for the future than the present.  He did not think it necessary, he said, to urge Julia on the subject of her reconciliation with her step-father; but he felt that she was quite ready for it.  He was, besides, preparing her more and more for it by conversing habitually with her of the old friendship that united him to Monsieur de Lucan, of their past life, of their travels, of the perils they had braved together.  Not only did Julia hear these narratives without revolt, but she often solicited them, as if she had regretted her prejudices, and had sought good reasons to forget them.

“Come, Pylades, speak to me of Orestes!” she would say.

After having spent the whole winter season and part of the spring in Italy, Monsieur and Madame de Moras visited Switzerland, announcing their intention of sojourning there until the middle of summer.  The thought occurred to Monsieur and Madame de Lucan to go and join them there, and thus abruptly bring about a reconciliation that seemed henceforth to be but a mere matter of form.  Clotilde was preparing to submit that project to her daughter when she received, one beautiful May morning, the following letter dated from Paris: 

“BELOVED MOTHER:—­’No more Switzerland!’ too much Switzerland!  Here I am; don’t disturb yourself.  I know how much you are enjoying yourself at Vastville.  We’ll go and join you there one of these fine mornings, and we’ll all come home together in the autumn.  I only ask of you a few days to look after our future establishment here.

“We are at the Grand Hotel.  I did not choose to stop at your house, for all sorts of reasons, nor at my grandmother’s, who, however, insisted very kindly upon our doing so: