They rapidly exchanged the usual courtesies of the day, in the usual elaborate and ornate Parisian fashion.
Mlle. Fouchette saw every minute detail of this meeting with an expression of intense concern. She weighed every look and word and gesture in the delicate, tremulous balance of love's understanding. And she realized that Jean's way was clear at last, and at the same time saw the consequences to herself.
Well, was not this precisely what she had schemed and labored to bring about?
Yet she stole away unobserved to the little kitchen, and there turned her face to the wall and covered her ears with her hands, as if to shut it all out. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was drenched with tears.
Meanwhile, the elder Marot, who had risen politely upon the entrance of Lerouge and his sister, stood apparently transfixed by the scene. At the sight of Andrée his face assumed a curious mixture of eagerness and uncertainty. Upon the mention of her name the uncertainty disappeared. A flood of light seemed to burst upon him with the encomiums showered upon his son.
When Jean turned towards his father—being reminded by a plucking of the sleeve—he was confounded to behold a face of smiles instead of the one recently clouded with parental wrath.
"This is m-my father, Monsieur Lerouge,—Mademoiselle——"
"What? Monsieur Marot? Why, this is a double pleasure!" exclaimed Lerouge, briskly seizing the outstretched hand. "The father of a noble son must perforce be a noble father. So Andrée says, and Andrée has good intuitions.—Here, Andrée; Jean's father! Just to think of meeting him on an occasion like this!"
Neither Lerouge nor his sister knew of the estrangement between Jean and his home. They had puzzled their heads in vain as to the reasons for Jean's retirement to the Rue St. Jacques, but were inclined to attribute it to politics or business reverses.
"Ah! so this is Monsieur Lerouge,—of Nantes," remarked the old gentleman when he got an opening.