I believe that that quarter of an hour was actual pain to Cecile from
the very overflowing rush of felicity. To have her husband seated
beside her, with his son upon his knee, had been the dream and prayer
of her life for six years, and now that it was gratified the very
intensity of her hopes and fears choked her, made her stammer and
answer at random, when a woman without her depth of affection might
have put out all kinds of arts to win and detain him.
After a time he put the child down, but still held his hand, came up
to the rest of the company and mingled with it. I could have wished
they had been younger and more fashionable, instead of a poor old
Scottish cavalier and his wife, my mother's old contemporary Madame
de Delincourt, and a couple of officers waiting for Solivet. Annora
was the only young brilliant creature there, and she had much too low
an opinion of M. d'Aubepine to have a word to say to him, and
continued to converse in English with old Sir Andrew Macniven about
the campaigns of the Marquis of Montrose, both of them hurling out
barbarous names that were enough to drive civilized ears out of the
room.
Our unwilling guest behaved with tolerably good grace, and presently
made his excuse to my mother and me, promising immediately to send
back Solivet to his friends. His wife went with him into the outer
room, and when in a few minutes Armantine ran back to call me---
'Papa is gone, and mama is crying,' she said.
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