“Quarrel? My dear Bertrand? Surely you are joking. How could there be a quarrel between us and the—er—Deydiers? The old man chooses to hold himself aloof from the château: but that is right and proper, and no doubt he knows his place. We cannot have those sort of people frequenting our house in terms of friendship—especially if your cousin Rixende should pay us a visit one of these days. Once an intimacy is set up, it is very difficult to break off again—and surely you would not wish that oil-dealer’s child to meet your future wife on terms of equality?”
“Rixende is not that yet,” Bertrand rejoined almost involuntarily, “and if she comes here——”
“She will have to come here,” grandmama said in her most decided tone. “Sybille de Mont-Pahon wishes it, and it is right and proper that Rixende should be brought here to pay her respects to me—and to your mother,” she added as with an after-thought.
“But——”
“But what,” she asked, for he seemed to hesitate.
“Rixende is so fastidious,” Bertrand said moodily. “She has been brought up in the greatest possible luxury. This old house with its faded furniture——”
“This old house with its faded furniture,” grandmama broke in icily, “has for centuries been the home of the Comtes de Ventadour, a family whose ancestors claimed kinship with kings. Surely it is good enough to shelter the daughter of a—of a—what is their name?—a Peyron-Bompar! My good Bertrand, your objections are both futile and humiliating to us all. Thank God! we have not sunk so low, that we cannot entertain a Mademoiselle—er—Peyron-Bompar and her renegade father in a manner befitting our rank.”
Grandmama had put on her grandest manner, and further argument was, of course, useless. Bertrand said nothing more, only stood by, frowning moodily. Micheline had succeeded in reaching the shelter of the window recess. From here she could still see Bertrand, could watch every play of emotion on his telltale face. She felt intensely sorry for him, and ashamed for him as well as for herself. But above all for him. He was a man, he should act as a man; whilst she was only a weak, misshapen, ugly creature with a boundless capacity for suffering, and no more courage than a cat. Even now she was conscious right through her pity for Bertrand which dominated every other feeling—of an intense sense of relief that the tattered curtain hung between her and grandmama, and concealed her from the irascible old lady’s view.
She tried to meet Bertrand’s eyes: but he purposely evaded hers. As for him, he felt vaguely ashamed he knew not exactly of what. He dared not look at Micheline, fearing to read either reproach or pity in her gaze; either of which would have galled him. For the first time, too, in his life, he felt out of tune with the ideals of the old Comtesse, whom he revered as the embodiment of all the splendours of the Ventadours. Now his pride was up in arms against her for her assumption of control. Where was his vaunted manhood? Was he—the head of the house—to be dictated to by women? Already he was lashing himself up into a state of rebellion and of fury. Planning a sudden assertion of his own authority, when his grandmother’s voice, hard and trenchant, acted like a cold douche upon his heated temper, and sobered him instantly.
“To revert to the subject of those Deydiers,” she said coldly, “my sister Mme. de Mont-Pahon has made it a point that all intimacy shall cease between you and them, before she would allow of Rixende’s engagement to you.”