“Rixende did not love you, Bertrand,” the mother murmured dully, “she never loved you.”
“She must have hated me,” Bertrand rejoined quietly, “and now she despises me too. You should have heard her laugh, mother, when I spoke to her of our life here together in the old château——”
His voice broke. Of course he could not bear to speak of it: and Nicolette had to stand by, seemingly indifferent, whilst she saw great tears force themselves into his eyes. She longed to put her arms round him, to draw his head against her cheek, to smooth his hair and kiss the tears away. Her heart was full with words of comfort, of hope, of love which, if only she dared, she would have given half her life to utter. But she was the stranger, the intruder even, at this hour. Except for the fact that she was genuinely afraid Marcelle de Ventadour might collapse at any moment, she would have slipped away unseen. Marcelle for the moment seemed to find in her son’s grief, a measure of strength such as she had not known whilst she was happy. She had led such an isolated, self-centred life that she was too shy now to be demonstrative, and it was pathetic to watch the effort which she made to try and speak the words of comfort which obviously hovered on her lips; but nevertheless she stood by him, with her hand on his shoulder, and something of the magnetism of her love for him must have touched his senses, for presently he seized hold of her hand and pressed it against his lips.
The clock above the hearth ticked loudly with a nerve-racking monotony. The minutes sped on while Bertrand and his mother stared into the fire, both their minds a blank—grief having erased every other thought from their brain. Nicolette hardly dared to move. So far it seemed that Bertrand had remained entirely unaware of her presence, and in her heart she prayed that he might not see her, lest he felt his humiliation and his misery more completely if he thought that she had witnessed it.
After awhile the Comtesse Marcelle said:
“You must be hungry, Bertrand, we’ll let grandmama know you’re here. She has ordered supper to be ready for you, as soon as you came.”
Bertrand appeared to wake as if out of a dream.
“Did you speak, mother?” he asked.
“You must be hungry, dear.”
“Yes—yes!” he murmured vaguely. “Perhaps I am. It was a long ride from Pertuis—the roads are bad——”