“You’re writing to some of your school friends, then, to tell them of your engagement.”
“No nearer.”
“Then you’re reminding your fiancé that he dines here this evening.”
“There’s no need of that.”
She held out the pages in which she had been writing, and he recognised the Roquevillard Book of the Family. According to old-fashioned custom, the Roquevillards kept one of those common-sense books in which our ancestors used to note down, side by side with the management of their estate, certain important facts of private life, such as marriages and deaths, births and honours, expenses, contracts, etc.—books which evoke the past with the impressiveness of old wills, and teach confidence in the future to any one who can draw inspiration from his forebears’ lives or wants to grow up worthy of them.
“I’m bringing it down to date,” added the girl. “Maurice’s return and Hubert’s decoration haven’t been entered in it yet.”
Mr. Roquevillard turned over the leaves of this book that bore such patient witness to the energy of his race, not without pride.
“Who will keep it up after you, Margaret?”
“But I shall go on with it myself, father.”
“No, a woman must belong to her new home.”