“I will drive my father myself,” said Nathalie, quickly. “Shall we start at once, father?” It was too much for her strength; but pride, different from the pride of the Beaudrillarts, though quite as intense, insisted upon clinging to him at this juncture. When they were in the carriage, he looked at his hand.
“Damme!” he said; “so that is how great folks shake hands, is it?”
“How?” asked his daughter, trying to smile.
“With two fingers, to be sure. You must learn that trick, my girl.”
Chapter Seven.
Vine-Snails.
Nathalie trusted, and her husband took for granted, that friendlier relations would spring up between her and her mother and sisters in law; but as the months rolled on, there was little apparent change. As much as possible she was ignored, at the best was treated with the ceremony due to a stranger. The hope with which she had begun her married life faded, and she gave up some illusions, but kept the sweetest of all, faith in her husband, although she had dropped the idea that he could help her in her other relationships, and perhaps at last realised this weakness in him: that he hated to face or to share disagreeables. Gradually her life took a threefold character: that with the family, that with her husband, and that in which she was alone. What she had to bear she endured grandly and silently, never complaining to Léon, or even asking his advice. She loved him passionately, and—which was stranger—he still loved her.
M. Bourget’s visit to Poissy had not been repeated. Fear lest his shrewd intelligence, once roused, should see too much, kept his daughter from suggesting his coming, although she felt with a pang that he expected an invitation. She often, however, drove to Tours, for she perceived that it gave him extreme pleasure to see the carriage appear, and sometimes to seat himself by her side while she invented errands which took them through the streets. On some pretext or another Léon always excused himself from accompanying her. If he were obliged to meet M. Bourget he showed perfect kindness and cordiality, but the common little figure and self-satisfied arrogance of the ex-builder was as distasteful to him as to the rest of his family, and he easily contented himself with the reflection that Nathalie would do all that was right and proper. M. Bourget never failed to ask for him, or to show a little disappointment that he had not accompanied his wife.