He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"Your logic is faultless, my dear Anne. If you had not married me, there would have been no handsome boy to fall in love with a pretty girl. And if La Marinière had not been near Lancilly—"
"Are you ever serious?" she said, and swept out of the room.
His strong face was grave enough as he looked after her.
But in Angelot's presence there was no such philosophical trifling. He was made to feel himself in deep disgrace with both his parents, and he was young enough to feel it very keenly. After the first tremendous scolding, they hardly spoke to him; he went in and out in a gloomy silence most strange to the sunny life of La Marinière. And at Les Chouettes it was no better.
In truth, Angelot found his uncle Joseph's deep displeasure harder to bear than that of any one else. There was something clandestine about the affair which touched the little gentleman's sense of honour; his code of manners and good breeding was also offended. He knew life; his own younger days had been stormy; and even now, though respecting morality, he was not strict or narrow. But such adventures as this of Angelot's seemed to him on a lower plane of society than belonged to Lancilly or La Marinière. A secret meeting at night; climbing ivy like a thief; making use of his familiarity with the old house to do what, after all, was an injury as well as an offence to its owners,—all this was matter of deep disgust to Monsieur Joseph.
"I thought Ange was a gentleman!" he said; and to Henriette, who with bitter tears confessed to him her part in the story, he would not even admire the daring spirit in which he and she had often rejoiced together.
"Hélène's fault, you say, child? No, we will not make that excuse for him. If the poor girl was unhappy, there were other ways—"
"But what could he have done, papa? Now you are very unkind. If she asked him to come, could he have said no? Is that the way for a gentleman to treat a lady?"
Riette had posed him, and she knew it. But she did not reap any personal advantage.