‘Tell me of him!’

‘He sent his love.  He commended you to me,’ I began.

‘Did he?  Oh, my dear hero!  And how is he looking?’

So it was of her husband, not her brother, that she was thinking.  I gave me a pang, and yet I could not wonder; and alas, d’Aubepine had not given me any message at all for her.  However, I told her what I thought would please her—­of his handsome looks, and his favour with the Duke of Enghien, and her great dark eyes began to shine under their tear-swollen lids; but before long, that terrible woman knocked at the door again to say that Madame la Comtesse’s carriage was ready, and that M. le Marquis awaited Madame la Vicomtesse.

We arranged our disordered dress, and went down hand-in-hand.  The Marquis and the Abbess both embraced the poor little Countess, and I assured her that we would meet again, and be much together.

’Madame la Comtesse will do herself the honour of paying her respects to Madame la Vicomtesse,’ said the dame de compagnie with the elder M. d’Aubepine, and had regulated her household of late years.

’I congratulate myself on not belonging to that respectable household,’ said my brother.

M. de Nidemerle laughed, and said the good lady had brought with her a fair share of Calvinist severity.  In fact, it was reported that her conversion had been stimulated by the hope that she should be endowed with her family property, and bestowed in marriage on the young d’Aubepine, the father of the present youth, and that disappointment in both these expectations had embittered her life.  I was filled with pity for my poor little sister-in-law, who evidently was under her yoke; and all the more when, a day or two later, the tow ladies came in great state to pay me a visit of ceremony, and I saw how pale and thin was the little Countess, and how cowed she seemed by the tall and severe duenna.

Little Gaspard was trotting about.  The Marquis was delighted with the child, and already loved him passionately; and the little fellow was very good, and could amuse himself without troubling any one.

He took refuge with me from Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; but as I held him to kiss his aunt, her eyes filled with tears; and when I asked whether her little girl could walk as well as he did, she faltered so that I was startled, fearing that the child might have died and I not have heard of it.

‘She is out at nurse,’ at last she murmured.

‘Children are best at farms,’ said Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; ‘Madame la Comtesse Douariere is not to be incommoded.’  The old man held out his arms to my little boy, and said something of his being a pleasure instead of an inconvenience; but though the lady answered politely, she looked so severe that my poor child hid his face on my bosom and began to cry, by way of justifying her.

However, when she was gone, both the gentlemen agreed that the little fellow was quite right, and showed his sense, and that if they had been only two years old, they would have cried too.