"Never mind," said Horatia. "I know what you mean."
Claude Edmond sat down upon the grass at her feet. After a moment or two of silence he said with solemnity, "Ma tante, I will confide to you my great ambition. It is to grow up like Uncle Armand."
Horatia made a movement. "You should desire to resemble your father."
"But that goes without saying," returned the boy, rather shocked. "I meant, in outward things, voyez-vous. I desire to have the learning of Papa, and to be able to ride like Uncle Armand, to know about plants and flowers and books—yes, and perhaps about animals—and to be able to fence and shoot...."
The child babbled on, but Horatia had fallen suddenly silent, and after a few moments, seeing her for once unresponsive, and mindful of having been warned by his father never to weary her, he tactfully announced that he would return to his attempts on the carp, and went off.
"I'll take the precious now, Mam, if you please," said Martha, bearing down on her mistress. "I don't want you to tire yourself, when you are getting some of your roses back again."
"Oh, I'm not tired," said Horatia smiling, but she kissed and surrendered her son, and having done so leant back in her chair and watched the distant figure of Claude-Edmond, in the eternally hopeful pose of the fisher, and trusted that he would not fall into the water.
It was true, she was not tired. Six weeks in the air of Plaisance had done wonders for her physical well-being. And something—could it have been the power of dulness?—had healed her mind of much of its malady. She was young and healthy, and she no longer troubled to make herself remember that Maurice was Armand's son. Here he was hers.
No doubt of Armand's guilt ever entered her mind. But Claude-Edmond's words about him had roused a picture ... Was it possible that she had behaved like a foolish girl? She had often heard Aunt Julia say, and had been irritated by the dictum, that a woman could make what she liked of her husband. And, though she had had everything in her favour, she had given up the attempt at the first difficulty. If he had gone straight to his mistress, it was largely her own fault.
But if she were regretting that she had not disputed with the Vicomtesse for Armand, that meant that Armand was worth fighting for, and over and over again she had told herself that he was nothing to her now. But was that quite true? If it were, how was it that she scanned so eagerly what newspapers she could procure for accounts of the progress of the cholera in Paris? His own short, polite notes to her told her little of it, but the sight of them stirred her, she could not quite say how.