“Heaven forbid!”
“Let us be unmethodical in peace. Besides, I have my reasons, and—Nathalie is waiting. Don’t you find her enchanting?”
“I think she has good sense.”
“And Claire and Félicie? She is so anxious, poor child, to love you all.”
“In good time,” said Mme. de Beaudrillart, coldly. “She has a great deal to learn, and we must expect some mistakes, but perhaps by-and-by she may take her position, and forget her little bourgeoise ways and small economics.”
He flushed. “We have had to adopt small economies ourselves, for that matter, mother.”
“Yes. Because they were necessary. With her it is because they are natural. Still, as I said, she has good sense, and I do not despair.”
“She is charming,” murmured the young man, under his breath. He was fully aware that prejudices against his wife existed in the house, but troubled himself very little about them. In time, no doubt, they would all shake in together. Meanwhile, he was quite able to shut his eyes to disagreeables which did not actually affect him. Winter was over, and heaven and earth had leaped into the radiance of spring. Poissy, with its delicate colours, its fretted carvings, smiled at its owners through a veil of fairy-like green. The debt was paid, husband and wife wandered together by the river which ran full after heavy rains, care had vanished, and the sun shone out again.
Nathalie, too, was happy, in spite of having many things to endure for Léon’s sake. It cannot be said that they came upon her unexpectedly, for she had always dreaded Poissy, and all the De Beaudrillarts, except Léon, as deeply as her father desired them. Weighed against Léon, she decided that they were as nothing, but this was before she had tried them, and with Love sitting heavily in one balance, it is next to impossible fairly to adjust the opposite weights.
She had a noble character, and this meant a strong will, but Mme. de Beaudrillart and her daughters—Claire, at any rate—had wills of iron. How much and how little to yield became a perpetually fretting problem. At first she carried her doubts to her husband, until she found that he could give her nothing more satisfying than a laugh and a shrug.