"Your son,
"Vicomte Paul de Lamare."
Jeanne was crushed. She remained motionless, the letter on her lap,
seeing through the cunning of this girl who had had such a hold on her
son for so long, and had not let him come to see her once, biding her
time until the despairing old mother could no longer resist the desire
to clasp her son in her arms, and would weaken and grant all they
asked.
And grief at Paul's persistent preference for this creature wrung her
heart. She said: "He does not love me. He does not love me."
Rosalie just then entered the room. Jeanne faltered: "He wants to
marry her now."
The maid was startled. "Oh, madame, you will not allow that. M. Paul
must not pick up that rubbish."
And Jeanne, overcome with emotion, but indignant, replied: "Never
that, my girl. And as he will not come here, I am going to see him,
myself, and we shall see which of us will carry the day."
She wrote at once to Paul to prepare him for her visit, and to arrange
to meet him elsewhere than in the house inhabited by that baggage.
While awaiting a reply she made her preparations for departure.
Rosalie began to pack her mistress' clothes in an old trunk, but as
she was folding a dress, one of those she had worn in the country, she
exclaimed: "Why, you have nothing to put on your back. I will not
allow you to go like that. You would be a disgrace to everyone; and
the Parisian ladies would take you for a servant."
Jeanne let her have her own way, and the two women went together to
Goderville to choose some material, which was given a dressmaker in
the village. Then they went to the lawyer, M. Roussel, who spent a
fortnight in the capital every year, in order to get some information;
for Jeanne had not been in Paris for twenty-eight years.