“I suppose we must expect snow now,” observed Madame de Château-Foix. “To-morrow is Christmas Eve.”
Lucienne moved a little. “Then it is a year ago to-day,” she said in a low voice, “since I angered you about Mr Trenchard’s flowers. How long ago it seems! . . . and how far away that self seems from this! I was a child then.”
The fingers still caressed her hair, and the eyes above her looked down at her very kindly.
“. . . But I have learnt much since then . . . and most of all from you, Madame.”
The hand stopped. “From me, child!” said the Marquise. “You had better go to another teacher.”
Lucienne raised herself. “Yes, indeed, Madame, from you,” she said, and her eyes were full of tears. “These last three months . . . how you have borne it . . . Oh, I cannot say what I would!” She clasped the Marquise’s knees passionately, and laid her head there again.
“My child—that I was to call daughter,” said Madame de Château-Foix sadly, “I have a confession to make to you; it will show you that, passionately as I loved him, I have done Gilbert a wrong—and you, too. Every day I have been putting off telling you, because it was difficult for me. . . . Gilbert wished you—if he were killed—to marry.”
Lucienne slowly drew away from her support and put her hands over her face. Was she horrified?
“It was his thought for you, Lucienne,” went on the poor mother, as if pleading an excuse. “He did not want your life to be spoiled. That is easy for me to understand. But he went further: he named the man he wished you to marry. Perhaps you could guess him?”
She was trying to spare the girl, not realising that she was but prolonging her pain.