“All right, then; you must get off quickly,” said Rosalie with vivacity, delighted with this pretext of getting Hortense away.
“Yes, but there is your father, who would be alone—”
“I will go and see him every day—”
Then, sobbing, the poor mother acknowledged the horror which such a trip with her daughter caused her. During an entire year it had been necessary for her to run from one watering place to another for the sake of the child they had already lost. Was it possible that she would have to begin again the same pilgrimage, with the same frightful results in prospect? And the other, too,—the disease had seized him at the age of twenty, in his full health, in his full powers—
“Oh Mamma, do be quiet!”
And Rosalie scolded her gently: Come, now; Hortense was not ill; the doctor said that the trip would only be a pleasure party; Arvillard, in the Alps of Dauphiny, was a marvellous country; she herself would like nothing better than to accompany Hortense in her mother’s place; unfortunately, she could not do it. Reasons most serious—
“Yes, yes. I understand—your husband, the Ministry—”
“O, no. It isn’t that at all!”
And to her mother, in that nearness of heart which they so seldom found affecting them: “Listen, then, but for you alone—nobody knows it, not even Numa ...” she acknowledged a still very fragile hope of a great happiness which she had quite despaired of, the happiness which made her wild with joy and fear, the entirely new hope of a baby who might perhaps be born to them.