The young maidens entered the dining-room together. Maurice came in late. The meal passed almost in silence, though the Countess and Count Tristan made unusual efforts to keep up a conversation.
Bertha was right in imagining Maurice had lost all inclination to appear at the ball. When she brought up the subject, he answered impatiently that he did not intend to go. His grandmother heard the remark, and made an especial request that he would change that decision and accompany them. Bertha added her entreaties; but Maurice seemed inclined to rebel, until she whispered,—
"If you stay at home, my aunt will say it is Madeleine's fault, and she will be vexed with her again. Madeleine begged you would spare her this new trial, and bade me entreat you to go."
Maurice looked across the table, for the first time during dinner, and found Madeleine's eyes turned anxiously upon him.
"I will go," he murmured.
His words were addressed rather to her than to Bertha. A scarcely perceptible smile on the lips of the former was his reward.
No comment was made upon Madeleine's determination to remain at home. But the tone of the countess to her niece, when she was officiating as usual at her aunt's toilet, was gentler than she had ever before used. Not the faintest allusion to the events of the morning dropped from the lips of either.
At last the carriage drove from the door, and Madeleine was left alone with her own thoughts. The mask of composure was no longer needed, yet there was no return of the morning's turbulent emotion.
Are not great trials sent to incite us to great exertions, which we might not have the energy, the wit, perhaps the humility, to undertake, but for the spurring sting of that especial grief? Madeleine had resolutely looked her affliction full in the face; had grown familiar with its sternest, saddest features; had bowed before them, and dashed the tears from her eyes, to see more clearly as that sorrow pointed out a path which all her firmness would be taxed in treading,—a path which she had never dreamed existed for her, until it had been opened, hewn through the rocks of circumstance by that day's heavy blows, that hour's piercing anguish.
Her greatest difficulty lay in the necessity of concealing the step she was about to take from her aunt, whose violent opposition would throw a fearful obstacle in the way. It was easier to avoid than to surmount such a barrier; but if it could not be avoided, it must be surmounted. In that decision she could not waver.