After the gay warmth and joy of their meeting this pause came almost like embarrassment, as if they found themselves, after all, strangers.
His mother was quick to see the change in the new arrival. At first she did not think this Marius as handsome as the boy who had left her two years ago. The next second she told herself that his powdered hair, his elegant clothes, his graceful bearing, had vastly improved him, and that he was very like his father.
He came round the table, took her hand and kissed it.
"How beautiful you are, mother," he said.
The Countess coloured. That, too, was like his father. Across this scene of the handsome room, with its pleasant appointments, with the figures of young man and woman, rose the picture of a tablet in the parish church. She felt suddenly very lonely.
"Susannah will show you your room," she said faintly, "and then we will have dinner."
"The same room?" smiled Marius.
"Oh, yes!" nodded Susannah.
"Then I can find it. I have not been away a hundred years, my lady, and I hear them with the portmantles. You must not move for me."
Laughing, he left the room. They heard his greetings to the servants in the hall, and the agreeable bustle of arrival filled the quiet house.