Between ten and eleven the next morning Madame de Château-Foix espied from the window the cassocked form of M. des Graves coming up the avenue, and she also saw her husband go to meet him, as he often did. From the time of their marriage the Marquis had been wont to speak with pride of a long-trusted friend, who was at once a priest and a man of the great world. His name, she knew, promised to be an illustrious one, and it was whispered that the Papal Court had more than once offered him preferment. But she had never met him until the influence which she had always vaguely felt became a reality. When Gilbert was a boy of six or seven this courtier-priest—for such she had always pictured him—accepted, to her amazement, the living of Chantemerle. For what reason Sébastien des Graves had been content to take upon himself the duties of an obscure village curé she could not guess, and her husband, whom she naturally suspected of knowing, preserved an impenetrable silence on the point.
The Marquise suddenly unfastened the window and stepped out on to the flight of steps which led down to the garden. The two men saw her, and, leaving the gravel, made their way over the wet grass. A clear sky had followed on yesterday’s rain, and the birds were singing.
“Good-morning, Father,” she said as they began to ascend the steps. “Your new pupil is already in the library with Gilbert awaiting you.”
“Not with apprehension, I trust,” returned the priest, smiling. His clearly-cut features were of the type generally associated with the statesman-ecclesiastic. The lines about his mouth, stern almost to harshness, seemed to denote the churchman of high place; it was only the depth of kindness in the eyes which betokened the parish priest to whom no one ever looked in vain. Of middle height and powerful build, he betrayed his forty-two years only by a slight sprinkling of white on his hair.
The Marquis de Château-Foix laughed. “I don't think, Sébastien, that you will find Louis unduly timorous.”
The preceptor found him, on the other hand, endowed by nature with a very healthy aversion to Latin grammar. However, he was quick, and quite reasonably docile, and M. des Graves announced, to the Marquis’ satisfaction, that, at the price of a little extra attention, the two boys could do the same lessons.
A week, a fortnight passed away in great harmony. Gilbert gave his new playmate a much-valued puppy, and lent him his pony. Madame de Château-Foix began to relax her slightly jealous maternal attitude and to feel that all was for the best, since the two got on so well together.
Announcement of a disagreement, however, was formally made to her one morning. “If it please Madame la Marquise, Monsieur le Comte and Monsieur le Vicomte are fighting in the Italian garden. We cannot find Monsieur le Marquis, and Monsieur le Curé has not come up yet.”
Annoyed and a little apprehensive, Madame de Château-Foix went down to separate the combatants, but found the conflict virtually over. Gilbert, looking very hot and untidy, but not particularly elated or vindictive, was standing, in shirt and breeches, watching his cousin, who, sitting on the curved stone bench amid the empty flower-beds, was holding an ensanguined handkerchief to his face. Stains of the same hue were discernible all down the front of his shirt.