"Yes, for I do not count the light-headed Adolphine any one."
"But you,—you are going with us?"
"I shall not go unless Maurice and Mademoiselle Madeleine go," replied M. de Bois.
"And you can let me go without you? You can let me take such a journey with my aunt in her broken state of health?"
"I will not let you go at all if I can prevent your going."
Not a few persuasions were needed before M. de Bois could obtain Bertha's promise to inform her aunt that she could not accompany her except upon the conditions Maurice had made. Bertha looked like a culprit awaiting sentence, rather than a person who came to dictate, when she entered Madame de Gramont's apartment. The countess had been highly incensed by her conversation with Maurice, and was wrought up to such a pitch that she seemed to have gained sudden strength, and almost to be restored to health. Bertha stole to her side, but the young girl's good intentions were oozing away every moment. The probability is that that she would not have had the courage to introduce the subject at all had not the countess asked,—
"Have you heard of the unnatural conduct of Maurice? Do you know that my own grandson abandons me?"
"I have heard," replied Bertha, hesitatingly. "Oh! what are we to do? How could you ever travel to Brittany alone?"
"Alone?" cried the countess, catching hold of the blue silk curtains that draped her bed, and raising herself by clinging to them. "Alone? Do you, too, forsake me? But what else could I expect when my grandson, my only child left, has abandoned me?"
Bertha's determination was put to flight by her aunt's woful look as she spoke these words with despairing fierceness, while she grasped the curtains more tightly and bore heavily upon them for support.