It was a relief, on entering the room, to see her mother seated on her usual chair. Pale, very pale, and looking all the more so from the reddened eyelids which told of recent and prolonged weeping. Stasy was kneeling on the floor beside her.
“Mamma, dearest,” said Blanche, “what is wrong? You are not ill? No, thank God—then it can’t be anything very dreadful.”
For there was a strange side of comfort in the isolated position of the little family. When they were all together and well—they had caught sight of Herty playing happily in the garden—nothing, as Blanche had said, “very dreadful” could be the matter. Still, something grievous and painful it must be, to have thus affected the usually cheerful mother; and again, before Mrs Derwent had time to reply, Blanche’s fancy had pictured every kind of possible and impossible catastrophe, except the actual fact.
Mrs Derwent tried to smile.
“You are right, Blanchie,” she said; “it is ‘Thank God,’ as we are all together. But read this.”
She held out a thick foreign letter, closely written in a clerkly hand which Blanche knew well. It was that of the lawyer at Bordeaux, Monsieur Bergeret, and though couched in a good deal of legal technicality, the general sense was not difficult to gather. The old and honourable house of “Derwent and Paulmier” was bankrupt—hopelessly ruined. Monsieur Bergeret, while expressing his deepest sympathy, held out no hopes of any retrieval of the misfortune.
“Mamma,” said Blanche, looking up with startled eyes, “what does it mean? How does it affect us?”
For she knew that, besides any practical bearing on themselves, the blow to her mother would be severe. Her husband’s and her father-in-law’s universally respected position had for more than half her lifetime been a source of natural pride to Mrs Derwent, and even now, though they were dead, their honourable name must be lowered.
But alas! it was worse than this.