Mademoiselle Blanche: A Novel

by John D. Barry

XII

The weeks of convalescence that followed were the happiest Blanche had ever known. She felt wrapped in the devotion of her husband and her family, and exalted by her love for her child. At moments she feared that she could not live through such happiness. Sometimes she would fancy that all her sufferings had been only a dream, and then she would turn and find with a thrill of joy the babe lying beside her. Jules would sit by the bed holding her hand, and making jokes about their daughter's future. They had decided that she should be called Jeanne, and no one but Father Dumény should baptize her.

One morning, when Blanche was sitting up in bed for the first time, Jules entered the room with a letter in his hand and in his face a look of exultation.

"It's from Marshall," he said, "from the Hippodrome in London, you know. He wants me to make a contract for six months, from the first of January. I was afraid he might back out because we held off so long. But this makes it all right. You'll have more than a month to get strong again and to practise in."

Jules was so excited by the prospect that he did not notice the look of alarm that had appeared in his wife's eyes. She lay still, with one arm extended on the coverlet, her head leaning to one side, and her dark hair making a background for her white face.

"'We want you to open on the first,'" Jules read aloud. "'Let us hear from you as soon as possible and we will send on the contract for your signature.' Of course," he went on, folding the note, "we must jump at it. What do you say?"

For a moment she looked at him without speaking. Then she replied weakly, "Do what you think best, Jules."

"Good!" he said, jumping up. "I'll write now. We've lost a lot of time, you know, and we must make up for it when we get back to work."

"Do you—do you think I'll be strong enough?" she went on, as if she hadn't heard him.

"Strong enough!" he laughed. "Of course you'll be strong enough in seven weeks more. You're nearly your old self now," he added affectionately. "Don't you worry about that."