Presently further stir, and Maurice was borne in like a relic, and deposited in a strange shrine, his great-grandmother's lap. Somewhat to Tristram's surprise, Armand immediately went over to him and presented his finger; the infant, whose face had assumed an anxious expression, crowed loudly and seized it.
"Small doubt that he is thy son, mauvais sujet," Tristram heard the Duchesse to remark sotto voce to her grandson. "His eyes are more like thine every day. Do not throw thyself about thus, little one; I have held many children before thee."
But Tristram, the prey of a curious fascination, remained where he was. And all this while, too, Horatia was sitting leaning her head on her hand, at the other side of the room, alone, almost unnoticed, except that Dormer, though still talking to Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, was looking at her intently. It was true that Horatia's eyes were fixed upon the group round the sofa, or rather upon its centre; their expression was not to be read, but the weariness, the profound lassitude of her pose was the ineffaceable thing which Tristram carried away from the scene—that, and Armand's look as he stooped over their child.
CHAPTER XVIII
(1)
When Tristram and Dormer had departed, and the family party broken up, the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon went to her own apartments and wept hysterically. The following Sunday she resumed her attendance at Morning Prayer.
The reason for her action was not far to seek. Of all the emotions which the sight of Tristram had called up, homesickness was the most piercing. She had not let him see it; she had not thought, before he came, that she was capable of any more feeling. She had told herself, when she got his letter from Italy, that she was far too miserable to care whether he came or no. But when she talked with him, when the sound of his voice had rekindled all the past years of happiness, she desired passionately the things of home, more even than when her father had come over, for then she had hardly strength for a wish of any kind.
She had long been putting off going again to the Embassy chapel, on the score that she was not well enough; on the same pretext she did not read Morning Prayer with Martha either. It was only occasionally that she said her own prayers. She told herself that probably there was no God at all. But now, with Tristram's visit, there sprang up immediately the desire for this renewal of contact with things English, because she felt that there she could indulge in a very luxury of unhappiness. She went with that intention.
But the effect was wholly different from her anticipations. Morning Prayer, both in its religious and national aspects, may be said to produce an atmosphere if repeated often enough. It disposes the mind to the ideals of duty, uprightness, and faithfulness. It does not move immediately to the heights and depths of great sacrifices, as the Mass will do, though in the end the result is perhaps the same. Horatia came away that Sunday from the Embassy Chapel with a most uncomfortable doubt whether she were really being, not a noble, injured, suffering wife, but a rather ignominious and cowardly person. Would not her father be shocked at her failure in wifely duty? Would not all the generations of Grenvilles behind her have been shocked?
The idea was so unpleasant that she strove with it, and, having actually caught a slight cold during the week, absolved herself from attending Divine Service for some time.