"You want to know where I have been, ma mère? I have been in France with a travelling companion, whose acquaintance you must now make. Here he is."
Mme. de la Vireville, still under the sway of emotion, turned, looking for something of the size of her son. So at first she saw no one. Then she gave an exclamation.
"Anne, let me present you to my mother. Ma mère, this is the Comte Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny. We will tell you our adventures presently; but just now I fancy that M. le Comte is hungry."
"The little angel!" murmured Mme. de la Vireville, and this time it was she who had to stoop. "He shall come home with us at once, le cher petit."
And Anne finished his journey, therefore, holding a hand of each.
(2)
Mme. de la Vireville lived in the plainest way in a small house in St. Helier. Indeed no other manner of life was open to her, for she and her son were very poor, though they had not always been so. But resource was innate to her French blood. Besides, Jersey was dear to her—dearer at least than England would have been—for it was near France, and those expeditions in which Fortuné so frequently hazarded his life had Jersey for their starting-point. So, at irregular intervals, she was able to see him; sometimes he even slept a night or two beneath her roof. Every time they parted she knew that the odds were considerably on the side of their never meeting again. But she had in her little body the soul of a hero, and in consequence her son kept back few secrets from her; indeed, he often came to her for advice, as he would have done to a comrade. In spite of great sorrows she had about her something eternally young, something in the mind corresponding to the almost infantine freshness of her oval face under its crown of grey hair.
The simple meal was gay. The small visitor, bathed, brushed, even mended as to his more noticeable rents, had one side of the table to himself, and plied a very creditable knife and fork. How much he loved and admired Fortuné, and how fond Fortuné was of him, soon became apparent to Mme. de la Vireville; and when she slipped out into the kitchen to put the last touches to the salad, Jeanne Carré, the Jersey girl, observed respectfully:
"One might almost say, Madame, that it was M. le Chevalier's son sitting there at table with you!"