“It does not matter who is present,” said Augustine. “Every one knows what my life is, and what is the curse of our house.”
“Pardon, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume. “I am of the house, but I do not know.”
“Ah!” said Augustine, looking at him. “After Herbert, you represent the elder branch, it is true; but you have not a daughter who is young, under twenty, have you? that is what I want to know.”
“I have three daughters, ma sœur,” said M. Guillaume, delighted to find a subject on which he could expatiate; “all very good—gentille, kind to every one. There is Madeleine, who is the wife of M. Meeren, the jeweller—François Meeren, the eldest son, very well off; and Marie, who is settled at Courtray, whose husband has a great manufactory; and Gertrude, my youngest, who has married my partner—they will succeed her mother and me when our day is over. Ma sœur knows that my son died. Yes; these are misfortunes that all have to bear. This is my family. They are very good women, though I say it—pious and good mothers and wives, and obedient to their husbands and kind to the poor.”
Augustine had continued to look at him, but the animation had faded out of her eyes. “Men’s wives are of little interest to me,” she said. “What I want is one who is young, and who would understand and do what I say.”
Here Giovanna got up from her chair, pushing it back with a force which almost made Stevens drop the dish he was carrying. “Me!” she cried, with a gleam of malice in her eyes, “me, ma sœur! I am younger than Gertrude and the rest. I am no one’s wife. Let it be me.”
Augustine looked at her with curious scrutiny, measuring her from head to foot, as it were; while Miss Susan, horror-stricken at once by the discussion and the indecorum, looked on breathless. Then Augustine turned away.
“You could not be Herbert’s wife,” she said, with her usual abstract quiet; and added softly, “I must ask for enlightenment. I shall speak to my people at the almshouses to-morrow. We have done so much. His life has been given to us; why not the family salvation too?”
“These are questions which had better not be discussed at the dinner-table,” said Miss Susan; “a place where in England we don’t think it right to indulge in expressions of feeling. Madame Jean, I am afraid you are surprised by my sister’s ways. In the family we all know what she means exactly; but outside the family—”
“I am one of the family,” said Giovanna, leaning back in her chair, on which she had reseated herself. She put up her hands, and clasped them behind her head in an attitude which was of the easiest and freest description. “I eat no more, thank you, take it away; though the cuisine is better than my belle mère’s, bon papa; but I cannot eat forever, like you English. Oh, I am one of the family. I understand also, and I think—there are many things that come into my head.”