“I suspect M. Ivan has heard something of a certain M. de Sartines which has disquieted him.”
“What can he have heard of him?”
“I do not know exactly; but the idea seems to have been given that he aspires to the hand of Clémence.”
“Oh, as for that, it must be a mistake! M. de Sartines has but just returned to Paris after an exile of several years. If in former days he had any penchant, I believe it was—do not laugh, Henri—for the mother, not the daughter. My own ideas for Clémence—not that there is any use in expressing them now—pointed, I must confess, in a different direction. I am not rich, but these are evil days, and it is something to have saved from the wreck of a fine fortune even so much as I have contrived to do—for Emile.” A faint, delicate flush overspread the furrowed cheeks of the old lady as she uttered the name she loved best in the world, and added, with a little tender hesitation that was almost touching, “I am very fond of your sister, M. Henri.”
“I know it, ma tante,” said Henri, kissing her hand. “I can never be half grateful enough for all your goodness to her, and to my dear mother. But I am sure Clémence will be happy, and that you are kind and generous enough to rejoice in her happiness.”
He went to the door of his sister’s room, and knocked. After a slight pause, his knock was answered by a gentle “Come in” from Madame de Talmont. Mother and daughter stood together at the window, and traces of tears were on both their faces. Henri made his request that Clémence would accompany him into the town; and Madame de Talmont, who did not like to deny him anything, decided that she had better go. Clémence would far rather have stayed at home; but she yielded, as usual, to the wishes of her mother.
“Have you no dress but that one?” asked Henri with a little hesitation, as he pointed to the plain black serge worn as mourning for him, and which, in the three bright, bewildering days that had passed since his return, she had been too much occupied to think of discarding. “M. Ivan tells me that the Czar noticed with sadness ‘the number of women and children in mourning’ that he saw on the day of his triumphal entry into Paris. Do not let him see one in mourning to-day who has no cause to mourn.”
“I have one coloured dress,” said Clémence; and going to a closet near at hand, she took out the purple brocade which her mother had given her before Henri’s departure, and which she had never worn.
“It will do very well,” said Madame de Talmont. “Already the story of my life is wrought into the pattern of those flowers.—And now thine.”
Henri and Clémence were soon threading their way through the crowded street, where the inhabitants of Versailles were making holiday. The brother and sister seemed to have changed positions, if not characters. Henri had passed through such terrible suffering of body and mind, that although the one might recover its strength and the other its tone, still there was something gone from him which could never return: he had left his youth behind him in the snows of Russia. On the other hand, a fresh spring-time of life and hope had come to Clémence; the garden of her sad and careful girlhood was beginning to rejoice and blossom as the rose. As in former days the grave and motherly elder sister had watched over and counselled the careless, happy-hearted boy; so now it became the office of the manly brother to protect and shield, perhaps to advise, the young and timid maiden trembling on the brink of the deeper joys of womanhood. Yet, though they had much to talk of, at first few words passed between them.