"Madame," I interrupted, "do you love your daughters?"
"Love them? of course I do! At the same time—" She shrugged her shoulders and resumed her plaint.
"Ah, it is hard; I fly from trouble, and it comes always my way. I need peace, and there is always strife. I am so unhappy, so worried, so alone; I trust no one, I believe nothing they tell me. If our relatives were to hear of this! But they shall not; not for worlds would I confide in them. But one must confide in somebody, mustn't one? You, Mademoiselle, you have seen now the kind of thing I have to bear—I am only surprised that you have been so long here without seeing an exhibition like today's. You know now how my daughters treat their mother—"
"Madame," I interposed, "I know nothing. The whole scene at luncheon leaves me bewildered. What did happen?"
"Something, I'm sure. Gros must have seen something: not that at bottom she was reliable, but she could not have invented the whole thing like that, could she? And I was beginning to have a kind of suspicion myself, too. But when Suzanne explained, it seemed true, didn't it? She was never a child for falsehoods. And then I remembered how Gros hated Monsieur de Fouquier—"
"Why?"
"Oh, she always hated him ever since she's been here. She was always trying to poison my mind against him: as if she needed to! And as if a poor creature like that was able to influence me. She hated him so because he wanted me to part with her, and she knew it. He was always hoping she would leave."
"Why?" again.
"Because she was always talking against him to me: a vicious circle is it not? So perhaps what Gros said today was merely out of spite against him. Still, the very idea is terrible."