Honor blushed to her very ears. She and Stephanie had been playing only that day with Loulou and Toinette, the two youngest pupils, the old nursery game, never dreaming of harm.
“Avez-vous bien des filles, cousin,
Cousine la reine boiteuse—”
She hoped Jacqueline had not seen her. Madame Madeleine had asked her to amuse the little ones for half an hour. Next time they would play something else, “Compagnons de la Marjolaine,” or “Nous n’irons plus au bois!”
“How does your—your family” (Honor could not somehow bring herself to say “House”; it sounded so undemocratic!) “feel about the Republic?”
“We do not recognize it!” said Jacqueline calmly. “For us, it does not exist. We serve his sacred Majesty Louis Philippe Robert, whom you probably know only as the Duc d’Orleans.”
“I don’t know him at all!” said poor Honor.
Jacqueline gave her a compassionate smile. “His Majesty lives in retirement!” she said. “Little people like thee may be excused for an ignorance which is rather the fault of others than of thyself, Moriole. For the rest, we bide our time! We follow the customs of our House, and mate—so nearly as may be—with our equals.”
She then went on to tell Honor of the Fate that awaited her. She was to remain another year at school. Then, when she was eighteen, she was to be married, to the Sieur de Virelai, a nobleman of their own neighborhood, a friend of her father’s. He was somewhat older than her father, but a grand seigneur, with one of the historic castles of France.