“It is a long time since I have heard you speak thus to me.  Two months!  And I have been desolate in that large house you used to fill alone in the days gone by.”

The young wife interrupted her mother, reproachfully: 

“Oh! mamma; I beg you to be reasonable.”

“To be reasonable?  In other words, I suppose you mean that I am to get accustomed to living without you, after having for twenty years devoted my life to you?  Bear, without complaining, that my happiness should be taken away, and now that I am old lead a life without aim, without joy, without trouble even, because I know if you had any troubles you would not tell me!”

There was a moment’s pause.  Then Micheline, in a constrained manner, said: 

“What griefs could I have?”

Madame Desvarennes lost all patience, and giving vent to her feelings exclaimed, bitterly: 

“Those which your husband causes you!”

Micheline arose abruptly.

“Mother!” she cried.

But the mistress had commenced, and with unrestrained bitterness, went on: 

“That gentleman has behaved toward me in such a manner as to shake my confidence in him!  After vowing that he would never separate you from me, he brought you here, knowing that I could not leave Paris.”

“You are unjust,” retorted Micheline.  “You know the doctors ordered me to go to Nice.”

“Pooh!  You can make doctors order you anything you like!” resumed her mother, excitedly, and shaking her head disdainfully.  “Your husband said to our good Doctor Rigaud:  ’Don’t you think that a season in the South would do my wife good?’ The doctor answered:  ’If it does not do her any good it certainly won’t do her any harm.’  Then your husband added, ’just take a sheet of paper and write out a prescription.  You understand?  It is for my mother-in-law, who will not be pleased at our going away.’”

And as Micheline seemed to doubt what she was saying, the latter added: 

“The doctor told me when I went to see him about it.  I never had much faith in doctors, and now—­”

Micheline felt she was on delicate ground, and wanted to change the subject.  She soothed her mother as in days gone by, saying: 

“Come, mamma; will you never be able to get used to your part?  Must you always be jealous?  You know all wives leave their mothers to follow their husbands.  It is the law of nature.  You, in your day, remember, followed your husband, and your mother must have wept.”

“Did my mother love me as I love you?” asked Madame Desvarennes, impetuously.  “I was brought up differently.  We had not time to love each other so much.  We had to work.  The happiness of spoiling one’s child is a privilege of the rich.  For you there was no down warm enough or silk soft enough to line your cradle.  You have been petted and worshipped for twenty years.  Yet, it only needed a man, whom you scarcely knew six months ago, to make you forget everything.”