But when my mother came to hear how he and Annora had witnessed the scene from the windows of M. Darpent’s house, her indignation knew no bounds. I never saw her so angry with Eustace as she now was, that he should have taken his sister into the house of one of these councillors; a bourgeois house was bad enough, but that it should have been actually one of the disaffected, and that the Darpent carriage should have been seen at our door, filled her with horror. It was enough to ruin us all for ever with the Court.
‘What have we to do with the Court?’ cried my sister, and this, of course, only added fuel to the flame, till at last my mother came to declaring that she should never trust her daughter with my brother again, for he was not fit to take care of her.
But we were all surprised by Eustace, when he bade my mother good-night, quietly bending his dark curled head, ad saying: ‘My mother, I ask your pardon, I am sorry I offended you.’
‘My son, my dear son,’ she cried, embracing him. ‘Never think of it more, only if we never go home, I cannot have your sister made a mere bourgeoise.’
‘How could you, brother!’ cried Annora, waiting outside the door. ‘Now you have owned yourself in the wrong!’
‘I have not said so, Nan,’ he answered. ‘I have simply said I was sorry to have offended my mother, and that is true; I could not sleep under her displeasure.’
‘But you do not care about ruining yourself with this perfidious foreign Court.’
‘Not a rush, so long as I do not bring Meg and her son into danger.’
Things were quiet that night, but every one knew that it was only a lull in the storm.
I set off to morning mass with my son and little Armantine as usual, thinking all would be quiet so early in our part of the city, but before the service was over there was the dull roar of the populace in a fury to be heard in the distance, and Nicole met me at the church door entreating me to get home as quickly as possible.