The preparation of that welcome indeed, in the more material sense, had but this moment engaged her when she came down the staircase to await the travellers in the hall. The Marquis had been to Paris to fetch his small relative and was to bring him in the diligence as far as Pouzauges, where his own coach would meet him.
Madame de Château-Foix was a very handsome woman, to whom the term “beautiful” had never been applied. For her years, which were short of forty, she had, possibly, a too majestic port. Wearing her powdered hair in the very high and narrow style of the prevailing fashion, and, for the provinces, somewhat elaborately dressed, she came down the staircase gently chafing her hands.
“How chilly it is!” she said, as she reached the bottom. “Are you not catching cold there, Gilbert?”
“No, thank you, mamma; I am quite warm,” replied the boy, without turning his head.
His mother rustled softly along the hall to the fireplace. She was restless; the arrival of this little boy meant so much—so much, perhaps, of change; more, she was sure, than her husband seemed to realise.
“Come here, Gilbert,” she said suddenly.
The boy slipped obediently off the window-seat. He was not a good-looking nor even a particularly attractive child, but he was tall for his age, and well grown.
The Marquise put her hands on his shoulders and surveyed him for a moment; then she kissed him. “You quite understand, do you not, Gilbert, about your cousin? He is to be a new brother for you, and you are always to treat him as if he were your own younger brother, and make him feel that this is his home. But . . . remember, my dear boy,” her voice trembled a little, “remember that your father and mother love you none the less dearly because—because your cousin Louis is coming to live here; and remember, too, that he has no father nor mother of his own.”
“Yes, mamma,” said the boy, making no allusion to the thousand queries and surmises with which his own mind was filled. His mother kissed him again, and, released, he went slowly back to his post. But hardly had he got there before he called out with real boyish excitement: “Here they come! here they come! They’re in the straight bit of the avenue—and Jean-Baptiste is so wet. I can see the rain running off his hat in a stream!”
A moment or two later the domestics were opening the heavy doors to admit, from a background of torrential rain, a tall man leading by the hand a small figure wrapped about in a cloak. Muffled as this was, it extricated a hand on the threshold, and punctiliously plucked off its hat, revealing a curly, golden-brown head. The Marquise swept to meet the two.