Lucienne shook her head. “No, indeed not, Madame. I love to do it; please let me come at the usual time.”
And Madame de Château-Foix, after she had given her a kiss, watched her for a moment as she went along the landing, before she too entered her own room.
Only the firelight illumined it, for, though but five o’clock, it was quite dark outside. The Marquise lit the candles on her escritoire, unlocked a drawer and, taking out a little packet of papers tied with a black ribbon, laid them in front of her on the rosewood and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap.
There are some letters which a woman knows by heart, and which she yet reads every day. Of such was the letter in the bundle before Madame de Château-Foix; she had read it daily for the last three and a half months. But this evening she was slow to spread it out as heretofore, and she knew whence proceeded this hesitation. That letter—Gilbert’s last, written months before his death, found on him and sent to her by M. des Graves—that letter bade her do a thing which she had not yet been able to bring herself to do. And this disobeyed request, this injunction ever speaking from the pages of the last memorial she had of her dead son, was a living reproach to the poor woman, and gave a sharper sting to her agonies of grief. Yet she had instinctively fought against the command. She had told herself that Gilbert was quixotic, like his father—and like M. des Graves. But she knew that she would yield in the end, and now, having made up her mind that what he asked should be done by Christmas Day, she had but a matter of thirty-six hours or so left. And surely she had conquered her repugnance at last.
She untied the bundle and spread out the first letter—not very long, worn and crumpled, strongly creased at the folds and marked in the middle with a long brown stain. The other two of the trinity, treasured but less sacred, she knew by heart also—M. des Graves’ long compassionate epistle, and Louis’ heart-broken scrawl. And she read the first once more, with the tears gathering in her eyes. “O Gilbert, Gilbert, I will do it! Oh, forgive me that I have been so long! But it was hard!” The tears trickled through her ringless fingers, and one fell quietly on the ink of the letter and blurred it.
But when Lucienne tapped at the door some twenty minutes later, it was a gentle and composed voice without trace of tears which bade her enter. The Marquise was not lying on the sofa as was her habit at this hour; she was sitting in a great chair by the fire.
“Come and sit by me here, petite,” she said. “We will not read just yet.”
And Lucienne, catching a cushion off the sofa, sat down on the floor by her, laying her head at once on the elder woman’s knee.
The Marquise’s hand began to pass lightly over her hair. “Has Sir William come back from Bury?” she asked.
“I do not know, Madame. I have been in my room. I hope so, for it is snowing fast.”