In the end her wishes were carried out, and la belle grand'mère returned to the établissement at Arles. The Château St. Juste was shut up for the present, but once every year it was to be opened and filled with servants, and little Margot was to spend a month there with la belle grand'mère. For although she had given up the dot, she could not by any manner of means dispose of the Château St. Juste, which was her direct property, coming to her through her own father and grandfather.
CHAPTER XXII. IT IS JOYFUL TO BEHOLD THEE, MY PUSHKEEN.
On their way back to Desmondstown, Margot told Uncle Fergus that she meant to tell The Desmond everything.
"He will be shocked," returned Fergus Desmond.
"No," replied Margot, "the truth told as I shall tell it can never shock anyone. I will not allow him to think me what I am not. Uncle Fergus, I thought you were too great to permit it."
"I have not your strength of character, my child," said The Desmond of the future.
As little Margot had come back to Desmondstown now to live, as it was to be her home in the future, with the exception of the one month which she would spend with la belle grand'mère, and as mon grandpère was dead, her return was quiet and without that sense of rejoicing which stimulated it on her last return. There were no bonfires; there were no excited, screaming peasants; but Phinias Maloney was there with his little old cart, and the baby had grown so big that his mother thought that she might bring him out just for the bit colleen to kiss him. They drove quietly up to the rickety old house.
The girls were standing in the hall, all three of them dressed as young and as little like their age as ever. They all came forward to greet her, but Auntie Norah cried out: