“What? you again?” cried she, when she had recognized Madame Dambreville, whom she had forgotten.
The latter did not stir. The family quarrels, the noisy voices, the slamming of doors, seemed to have passed over her without her having felt the least breath of them. She remained immovable, looking into vacancy, buried in a heap in her love-sick mania. But there was something at work within her, the advice of Léon’s mother had upset her, and was deciding her to dearly purchase a few remnants of happiness.
“Come,” resumed Madame Josserand, roughly, “you can’t, you know, sleep here. I have had a note from my son, he is not coming.”
Then Madame Dambreville spoke, her mouth all clammy from her long silence, as though she were just waking up.
“I am going, pray excuse me. And tell him from me that I have reflected. I consent. Yes, I will reflect still further, and perhaps I may help him to marry that girl, as he insists upon it. But it is I who give her to him, and I wish him to ask me for her, me alone, you understand! Oh! he must come back, he must come back!”
Her ardent voice became quite beseeching. She added, in a lower tone, in the obstinate way of a woman who, after sacrificing everything, clings to a last satisfaction.
“He shall marry her, but he must live with us. Otherwise nothing will be done. I would sooner lose him.”
And she went off. Madame Josserand was most charming again. In the ante-room, she said all sorts of consoling things, she promised to send her son submissive and tender, that very evening, affirming that he would be delighted to live at his aunt-in-law’s. Then, when she had shut the door behind Madame Dambreville’s back, filled with a pitying tenderness, she thought:
“Poor boy! what a price she will make him pay for it!”
But, at this moment, she also heard the dull thud, which caused the boards to tremble. Well? what was it? was the servant smashing all the crockery, now? She hastened to the dining-room, and questioned her daughters.