"He cannot refuse to pay his respects to his mother."
M. de Courson shrugged his shoulders and stared moodily into the fire.
"Have you heard anything fresh about Ronnay de Maurel, Baudouin?" queried Mme. la Marquise sharply. "Anything that I ought to know?"
"Only what is common talk round the neighbourhood, my dear," he replied.
"And that is?..."
"That Gaston de Maurel has brought up his nephew—your son, my dear Denise—as little better than the workmen in his factories. Ronnay, it seems, is quite illiterate, and his manners are those of a peasant. The most violent democratic principles have been inculcated into him from childhood...."
"Ever since the law freed me from his father's brutalities ..." broke in Madame coldly.
"Exactly," assented M. de Courson, in an obviously conciliatory spirit, "when your husband died, my dear, his brother Gaston took up his work with the boy. You know the type of man Gaston de Maurel always was—the Revolution suited his temperament exactly. Cruel, vindictive, jealous, violent, he voted for the September massacres and for the execution of the King. Had Ronnay been old enough he, too, would have been a regicide."
Mme. la Marquise shuddered.