"M. le Vicomte? Yes, Madame, he has been with us these three days. But he left this morning early, and I do not know where he has gone—a long distance, I think, for he went to catch the diligence. I am bringing Hirondelle back to Sessignes as he ordered me. Perhaps Madame would wish to ride her now, if I changed the saddles?"
"No," said Avoye with a catch in her breath, as she turned her horse's head homewards. "No, stay where you are, Eveno. I think M. le Vicomte would prefer it!"
(13)
And meanwhile the Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie had come to the end of her patience.
The relations of Avoye and Aymar for the last five or six years, as with a shrug of the shoulders she would admit, had been frankly beyond her comprehension. Mid-eighteenth century in her outlook as she was to the marrow, she had often told herself that in her young days such a situation as continued year after year at Sessignes would have been impossible; no Frenchman who prided himself upon being a galant homme would have endured it for more than a month or two. The cold Northern strain in his blood, inherited from his and Avoye's paternal great-grandmother, presumably accounted for, though it hardly excused, Aymar's patience. A man might have a mistress, and he might have a wife, but for a young man to live for years under the same roof with the woman he loved, who was neither, really struck Mme de la Rocheterie at times as improper.
But now the arrangement, which one would have thought just about to issue in a more satisfactory relation, had received a shrewd blow of some kind. Of the hand that had dealt it there could be no doubt; it only remained to discover the weapon which had been used. To this end she had just summoned her granddaughter to her boudoir, and as she sat there, beautifully attired as usual, there was that in her air which told the girl at once what the subject of the interview was likely to be.
There was indeed not time for doubt. Mme de la Rocheterie, motioning her to a chair, said coldly:
"I should like to know, Avoye, for what reason you have driven Aymar out of his own house?"
The fact that the phrase embodied her own self-reproach did not prevent Avoye from resenting it. Her colour rose. She could not possibly give the reason. . . . At that moment, with an almost sickening leap of the heart, she saw on the little table at her grandmother's elbow an opened letter in Aymar's handwriting.
"It is true that Aymar and I have had a . . . a disagreement," she admitted, her eyes fixed on the letter. "But I assure you, Grand'mère that I had not the slightest idea that he was going to leave the house like this, and I . . . I hope he is coming back."