“Even though,” he insisted, “even though until that marriage is accomplished, we cannot hope to pay off any of my father’s debts, even though for the next year, at least, we must go on spending more money and more money, borrow more and more, to keep me idling in Paris and to throw dust in the eyes of Mme. de Mont-Pahon.”
“We must do it, Bertrand,” she said earnestly. “Your grandmother says that we have to think of our name, not of ourselves; that it is the future that counts, and not the present.”
“But you, mother, what is your idea about it all?”
“Oh, I, my dear? I? I count for so little—what does it matter what I think?”
“It matters a lot to me.”
Marcelle de Ventadour sighed again. For a moment it seemed as if she would make of her son a confidant of all her hopes, her secret longings, her spiritless repinings; as if she would tell him of what she thought and what she planned during those hours and days that she spent on her couch, listless and idle. But the habits of a life-time cannot be shaken off in a moment, even under the stress of great emotion, and Marcelle had been too long under the domination of her mother-in-law to venture on an independent train of thought.
“My dear lamb,” she said tenderly; “I only pray for your happiness—and I feel that your grandmother knows best.”
Bertrand gave a quick, impatient little sigh.
“What we have to do,” his mother resumed more calmly after a while, “is to try and wipe away the shame that clings around your father’s memory.”
“We cannot do that unless we pay what we owe,” he retorted.