“I am going to prove myself still further obstinate, Monseigneur,” he said. He stifled a cough and braced his stooping figure. “I have wished—for some weeks—since I returned from the convent—to speak to you. I think this is my chance.”
The old man folded the paper across mechanically, and the great ruffles round his wrists shook with the quivering of his fair hands.
“What can you have to say, Luc?” he asked quickly.
His son came slowly to the table with the hesitating and uncertain step that was the accompaniment of his imperfect sight.
“I want to tell you, Monseigneur, what I mean to do.”
He seated himself on the old, high-backed walnut chair with the fringed leather seat which had been his since the time he had sat there, a stately child in skirts, murmuring grace or eating sugared macaroons.
“What you mean to do?” repeated the Marquis.
Luc raised his face. In the cold light of the early year and the shadows of the dark room this face looked like a mask of colourless clay modelled in lines of perpetual pain. The white curls of his wig fell either side on to his green coat, and his hands were again white, one holding the back of the black chair, one resting on the lace cloth.
He looked at his father steadily, and the blood receded from the Marquis’s strong features.
“What do you mean to do?” he asked. “Eh, Luc?”