“I tell him, before you, to look for no pity, no charity, no recognition from us until he has made his peace with his outraged God. Marguérite, am I right?”
She replied now in one word—
“Yes.”
Luc drew a little broken sigh.
“Farewell,” he said.
His father did not answer nor move from his haughty attitude, but his mother said in an awful voice—
“Farewell, and Christ have mercy on you.”
He could not see either of them. In moving to the door he stumbled several times against the furniture, for the deep twilight meant utter darkness to his partial blindness.
The two before the fire heard his awkward steps, his fumbling for the handle of the door, and never moved.
When he at last had gone from them utterly, the Marquis caught his wife by the shoulders and looked down into her face.