There was a letter the next day.  Half an hour after receiving it I found Cecile sunk down on the floor of her apartment, upon which all her wardrobe was strewn about as if to be packed up.  She fell into my arms weeping passionately, and declaring she must leave us. to leave us and set up her menage with her husband had always been her ambition, so it was plain that this was not what she meant; but for a long time she neither would nor could tell me, or moan out anything but a ‘convent,’ ‘how could he?’ and ‘my children.’

At last she let me read the letter, and a cruel one it was, beginning ‘Madame,’ and giving her the choice of returning to Chateau d’Aubepine under the supervision of Madame Croquelebois, or of entering a convent, and sending her son to be bred up at the Chateau under a tutor and the intendant.  She had quite long enough lived with Madame de Bellaise, and that young Englishman, her brother, who was said to be charming.

It was an absolute insult to us all, and as I saw at once was the work of Madame Croquelebois, accepted by the young Count as a convenient excuse for avoiding the ennui and expense of setting up a household with his wife, instead of living a gay bachelor life with his Prince.  I did not even think it was his handwriting except the signature, an idea which gave the first ray of comfort to my poor sister-in-law.  It was quite provoking to find that she had no spirit to resent, or even to blame; she only wept that any one should be so cruel, and, quite hopeless of being heard on her own defence, was ready to obey, and return under the power of her oppressor, if only she might keep her son.  All the four years she had lived with us had not taught her self-assertion, and the more cruelly she was wounded, the meeker she became.

The Abbe said she was earning a blessing; but I felt, like Annora, much inclined to beat her, when she would persist in loving and admiring that miserable fellow through all, and calling him ’so noble.’

We did not take things by any means so quietly.  We were the less sorry for my brother’s absence that such an insinuation almost demanded a challenge, though in truth I doubt whether they would have dared to make it had he been at hand.  Annora did wish she could take sword or pistols in hand and make him choke on his own words, and she was very angry that our brother de Solivet was much too cool and prudent to take Eustace’s quarrel on himself.

Here, however, it was my mother who was most reasonable, and knew best how to act.  She said that it was true that as this was my house, and the charge of M. d’Aubepine had been committed to me, I had every right to be offended; but as she was the eldest lady in the house it was suitable for her to act.  She wrote a billet to him demanding a personal interview with him that he might explain the insinuations which concerned the honour of herself, her son, and her daughter.