Something else was stirring in her too. Suppose she had not merely acted foolishly, but wrongly?
The feelings which had surprised her that morning in the Embassy Chapel had returned, but on a different plane. "We have erred and strayed ... there is no health in us." What if the over-familiar words really had a meaning, what if she herself, who uttered them so often and so lightly, had actually done wrong, grave wrong? This conviction grew in her. It was to Horatia the first vivid connection between the spiritual and material worlds, and was bringing her to the resolve that, when she returned, she would in some degree forgive Armand. She would admit that she had been a little hard. And the thought of this great concession pleased her; being in the future, it took on something of the glamour of the noble things we mean to do one day.
(2)
A week later a letter from the Duchesse announced that it was safe for her and the children to return to Paris, where the scourge, though still present, seemed to have spent its force. So they went back.
An air of calamity still brooded over the capital, and as they stopped at the barrier Horatia shuddered to see the street urchins playing at "cholera morbus," dragging one of their companions, a simulated corpse, along the ground. But her mind, after all, was full of a more personal concern. As she drew nearer to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, as Claude-Edmond, looking out of the window of the post-chaise, announced, "Here we are in the Place Vendôme," or, "Now we are turning into the Rue de Rivoli," it did not seem so easy a matter to bestow a pardon to which the culprit might now be indifferent.
Emmanuel, not Armand, was on the steps to receive her. He came down and helped her to alight. Claude-Edmond flung himself into his father's arms. And all at once Horatia knew that she was bitterly hurt. That Armand should not care whether she returned or no was one thing; that he should affront her before her brother-in-law and the servants was quite another. Too proud to make any remark at the moment on his absence, she turned to busying herself over Maurice, but once inside she said to Emmanuel, as lightly as she could, "I suppose that Armand was not expecting me so early?"
The Marquis looked disconcerted. "My dear sister, has the letter not reached you? He went very suddenly, the day before yesterday, to join Madame in Vendée."
(3)
Not by the tragic words "Too late" was the situation thus created summed up in Horatia's mind, for she had never been able to take the Duchesse de Berry very seriously. And though she was told that the princess had undoubtedly landed near Marseilles one dark night at the end of April, the very fact that the conflagration in the South which was to spring up at her appearance absolutely failed to emit a single spark only confirmed the English girl in her conviction. Nor did Marie-Caroline's romantic journey in disguise to Vendée (now matter of knowledge in Royalist circles) impress Horatia; it seemed to her too much like Walter Scott to be quite real, and she could not fancy that there would be actual fighting round such a fantastic heroine. Emmanuel did not seem to think so, either; at any rate he took no rosy views of her chances. The Duchesse, on the other hand, was at once more sanguine and more alarming, continually preaching with a mixture of resignation and elation a sort of version of "Paris vaut une messe," thus conceived: "If Henri V. cannot be set on the throne without the life-blood of one of our family, then I am willing that it should be given." This attitude seemed to Horatia so uncalled for that it irritated rather than dismayed her. Nor could she help feeling a tinge of annoyance, even if she would not confess it, at the check given by Armand's absence to her plan of forgiveness, for now she could not set herself right with him. She must wait till his return.
Yet she had her hours of apprehension. As a fortnight, three weeks passed without news these grew more frequent. And at last, when the Republican riots of the 5th and 6th of June burst over Paris, what she heard of the fierce street fighting, the stand at Saint-Merri, the eight hundred slain, brought home to her the political passions of the time with a horrible vividness, and she was at last nakedly afraid. The Duchesse, incurable Frondeuse that she was, was pleased at anything that shook or embarrassed the government, and declared that the news would be very encouraging to Madame's party.