"Are we beggars," she murmured, proudly defiant, "that we should be bidden to sue for grace?"
From where she sat, could her vision but have pierced through the forest of houses, and thence through the sunlit distance, she might have beheld the forest of Cluny, and that silent pool whereon the water lilies reared their stately heads. Here she had sat, just by this same window, when with bitter words—cruel in that irresistible appeal which they made to her heart—he had told her about that pool, the lilies stained with mud, the slimy weeds that spread and girt the graceful stems, the ineradicable smirch of contact with the infamies of this world.
Even now his captivating voice seemed to ring in her ears. The blaze of wrath fled from her cheeks, and the terrible, awful pain gripped her heart which she knew would never find solace whilst she lived.
At the other end of the room her parents were conversing on the ever-present topic.
Maman's hitherto indomitable optimism was at last giving way. She had held up bravely throughout these five weary months of waiting, hoping—almost against hope, sometimes—that everything would come right in one audience with Monseigneur.
With unvarying confidence she waited for the summons for Papa Legros to appear before His Greatness; once the Archbishop heard the truth he would soon put the matter to rights, and His Holiness himself would see that the child was righted in the end.
But now the long-looked-for audience had taken place, and it was no longer any use to disguise the fact that the last glimmer of hope had flickered out behind the gilded gates of Monseigneur's palace.
Maman, too, had felt indignant when first she heard the Archbishop's callous advice to Papa Legros. Her mother's heart rebelled at the very thought of seeing her child a suppliant; she would not add fuel to the flames of outraged pride by showing what she thought on the matter, but when Rose Marie rose in revolt with the indignant outcry of "Are we beggars?" she, the mother, quietly went up to her stewpot and kept her own counsels to herself, the while she stirred the soup.
Anon when the first wave of angry rebellion had subsided, when Rose Marie sat quiescent by the open window, Maman Legros put down her wooden spoon and went up to her husband, putting her heavy, rough hand on his shoulder, with a motherly gesture of supreme consolation.
"Perhaps Monseigneur is right, Armand," she said with her own indomitable philosophy; "why not make appeal to Lord Stowmaries, he may not be a bad man after all."