"My father must remain here, for he cannot be removed. I gladly accept my cousin's kind offer, and will remain to watch beside my father. Bertha and yourself can continue to live at the hotel and visit him as often as you feel inclined."
"Let me go! Let me go! I am suffocating! I stifle in this house!" burst forth the countess, as though she were really choking. "I cannot remain. Bertha, I want you. Maurice, give me your arm,—let me get away quickly."
Maurice reconducted his grandmother to the hotel, almost without their exchanging a word by the way. Bertha accompanied them, but she walked behind with Gaston de Bois.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MINISTRATION.
Maurice, exasperated as he was at his grandmother's insolence to his cousin, well knew that any attempt to soothe Madame de Gramont, or even to reconcile her to the inevitable, would be fruitless. Her domineering spirit could not bow itself to be governed, even by the pressure of inexorable circumstance; she strove to control events by ignoring their existence, and to break the force of her calamity by encasing herself in an iron mail of resistance, which, she thought, no blows could penetrate. This was her state when she hastened to her own chamber, and was about to lock herself in, under the conviction that she could shut out the phantom of misery which seemed to dog her steps.
"I will return this evening, and let you know how my father progresses," said Maurice, as she was closing the door.
She reopened it without moving her hand from the silver knob. "Then you persist in going back to that house?"
"Would you have me leave my father without a son's care? I shall remain at Madeleine's while it is necessary for my father to stay there."