“He will know me,” said the old man, going to his daughter’s aid. “A moment, give him a moment, Gertrude. A moi, Jeannot, à moi! Let him go, ma fille. Give him a moment to recollect himself; he has forgotten, perhaps, his language, Jeannot, my child, come to me!”
Jean paid no attention to these blandishments. When Gertrude, weeping, released, by her father’s orders, her tight hold of the child, he rushed at once to Giovanna’s side, and clung to her dress, and hid his face in its folds. “Mamma, mamma, take Johnny!” he said.
Giovanna stooped, lifted him like a feather, and tossed him up to her shoulder with a look of triumph. “There, thou art safe, no one can touch thee,” she said; and turning upon her discomfited relations, looked down upon them both with a smile. It was her revenge, and she enjoyed it with all her heart. The child clung to her, clasping both of his arms round hers, which she had raised to hold him fast. She laughed aloud—a laugh which startled every one, and woke the echoes all about.
“Tiens!” she said, in her gay voice, “whose child is he now? Take him if you will, Gertrude, you who were always the first, who knew yourself in babies, who were more beloved than the stupid Giovanna. Take him, then, since he is to thee!”
What a picture she would have made, standing there with the child, her great eyes flashing, her bosom expanded, looking down upon the plebeian pair before her with a triumphant smile! So Everard thought, who had entirely ranged himself on Giovanna’s side; and so thought poor Herbert, looking at her with his heart beating, his whole being in a ferment, his temper and his nerves worn to their utmost. He went away trembling from the sight, and beckoned Reine to him, and threw himself into a chair at the other end of the room.
“What is all this rabble to us?” he cried querulously, when his sister answered his summons. “For heaven’s sake clear the house of strangers—get them away.”
“All, Herbert?” said Reine, frightened.
He made no further reply, but dismissed her with an impatient wave of his hand, and taking up a book, which she saw he held upside down, and which trembled in his hand, turned his back upon the new-comers who had so strangely invaded the house.
As for these good people, they had nothing to say to this triumph of Giovanna. I suppose they had expected, as many innocent persons do, that by mere force of nature the child would turn to those who alone had a right to him. Gertrude, encumbered by her heavy travelling wraps, wearied, discouraged, and disappointed, sat down and cried, her round face getting every moment more blurred and unrecognizable. M. Guillaume, however, though tired too, and feeling this reception very different from the distinguished one which he had received on his former visit, felt it necessary to maintain the family dignity.
“I would speak with Madame Suzanne,” he said, turning to Reine, who approached. “Mademoiselle does not perhaps know that I am a relation, a next-of-kin. It is I, not the poor bébé, who am the next to succeed. I am Guillaume Austin, of Bruges. I would speak with Madame Suzanne. She will know how to deal with this insensée, this woman who keeps from my daughter her child.”