“Oh, madame! these moder-in-laws they be marplots between the young married ones,” cried Finette, lugubriously.
Having cast this lighted match into the gunpowder of her lady’s wrath, the artful and malicious French maid became discreetly silent.
Her mistress too was very quiet. She was divided between bitter wrath and inconsistent pique. She had forbidden her husband’s presence, yet she fiercely resented the fact that he had not insisted on coming into the room—that he had taken her dismissal so calmly and gone away.
“If he had really loved me, he would have insisted on seeing me,” she burst out, bitterly, and the wily French maid answered:
“Madame, he loves you—be sure of that. But he is too young; that is my master’s great fault. He is just from his books; he understands not, like a man of the world, the caprice of the woman. He knows not that her no means yes, and that her stay out means come in.”
Mrs. de Vere flushed at hearing herself so correctly analysed by the crafty French maid, but she did not contradict her. She remained silent for a few minutes, and Finette waited patiently. At last:
“He defies me; his mother defies me; the ungrateful beggars that I raised from penury to wealth and luxury!” Mrs. de Vere burst forth, wrathful, unheeding the presence of the attendant. “They keep the little wretch here, despite the fact that I ordered him to take it away! Strange! Strange! But I will show them what stuff Camille de Vere is made of! Finette!”
“Madame!”
“Do you not believe with me that this mysterious child is Norman de Vere’s own?”
Finette shrugged her narrow shoulders expressively.