I tried to say that I had never meant to return to the world, and that I still kept to my mourning; but my mother said with authority that I had better be grateful for any token of favour that was vouchsafed to me.  She took me into her apartment after supper, and talked to me very seriously; telling me that I must be very careful, for that I had been so imprudent, that I should certainly have been deprived of the custody of my son, if not imprisoned, unless my good godmother, Queen Henrietta, and herself had made themselves responsible for me.

I told my mother that I had done nothing, absolutely nothing, but attend to the wants of my son’s people, just as I had been used to see my grandmother, and my aunt Thistlewood, or any English lady, do at home.

‘And to what had that brought England?’ cried my mother.  ’No, child, those creatures have no gratitude nor proper feeling.  There is nothing to do but to keep them down.  See how they are hampering and impeding the Queen and the Cardinal here, refusing the registry of the taxes forsooth, as if it were not honour enough to maintain the King’s wars and the splendour of his Court, and enable the nobility to shine!’

‘Surely it is our duty to do something for them in return,’ I said; but I was silenced with assurances that if I wished to preserve the wardship of my child, I must conform in everything; nay, that my own liberty was in danger.

Solivet had hinted as much, and the protection of my child was a powerful engine; but—­shall I confess it?—­it galled and chafed me terribly to feel myself taken once more into leading-strings.  I, who had for three years governed my house as a happy honoured wife, and for three more had been a chatelaine, complimented by the old uncle, and after his death, the sole ruler of my son’s domain; I was not at all inclined to return into tutelage, and I could not look on my mother after these six years, as quite the same conclusive authority as I thought her when I left her.  The spirit of self-assertion and self-justification was strong within me, and though I hope I did not reply with ingratitude or disrespect, I would make no absolute promise till I had heard what my brother Walwyn said of my position in its secular aspect, and the Abbe Bonchamps in its religious point of view.  So I bade my mother good-night, and went to see how Cecile fared in her new quarters, which, to her grief, were in a wing separated from mine by a long corridor.

My mother had arranged everything, ruling naturally as if she were the mistress of the house.  Thus she installed me in the great room where I had seen the old Marquis, though I would rather she had retained it, and given me that which I had occupied when I was there with my husband.  However, I made no objection, for I felt so much vexed that I was extremely afraid of saying something to show that I thought she ought to remember that this was my house, and that she was my guest.  I would not for the world have uttered anything so ungenerous and unfilial; and all I could do that night was to pray that she might not drive me to lose my self-command, and that I might both do right and keep my child.