Perhaps you will say that Mlle. de la Bourbonais behaved like a flirt in parting with a discarded lover in this fashion. It is easy for you to say so. It is not so easy for a woman with a heart to inflict unmitigated pain on a man who loves her, and whose love she at least requites with gratitude, esteem, and sisterly regard.
Sir Ponsonby met the count on the road; he made sure of the encounter by walking his horse up and down the green lane which commanded the road from Dullerton to The Lilies. What passed between them remained the secret of themselves and the winter thrush that perched on the brown hedge close by and sang out lustily to the trees and fields while they conversed.
M. de la Bourbonais made no comment on his daughter’s tear-stained cheeks when he came home; but taking her face between his hands, as he was fond of doing, he gave one wistful look, kissed it, and let it go.
“How long you have been away, petit père! Shall we go to our writing now?” she inquired cheerfully.
“Art thou not tired, my child?”
“Tired! What have I done to tire me?”
She sat down at his desk, and nothing was said of Sir Ponsonby Anwyll’s visit.
The excitement of that day’s interview told, nevertheless, on Franceline. It left her nervous, and weaker than she had been since her recovery. These symptoms escaped her father’s notice, and they would have escaped Angélique’s, owing to Franceline’s strenuous efforts to conceal them, if a slight cough had not come to put her on the qui vive more than ever. It was very slight indeed, only attacking her in the morning when she awoke, and quite ceasing by the time she was dressed and down-stairs. Franceline’s room was at one end of the cottage; Angélique slept next to her; and at the other end, with the stairs intervening, was the count’s room. He was thus out of ear-shot of the sound, which, however rare and seemingly unimportant, would have filled him with alarm. Franceline treated it as a trifle not worth mentioning; but when her old bonne insisted on taking her discreetly to Dr. Blink and having his opinion about it, she gave in to humor her. The doctor once more applied his stethoscope, and then, smiling that grim, satisfied smile of his that was so reassuring to patients till they had seen it practised on others and found out it was a fallacy, remarked:
“We are glad to be able to assure you again that there is nothing to be frightened at; no mischief that cannot be forestalled by care, and docility to our instructions,” he added emphatically. “We must order you some tonics, and you must take them regularly. How is the appetite?” turning to Angélique, who stood by devouring the oracle’s words and watching every line of his features with a shrewd, almost vicious expression of mistrust on her brown face.
“Ah! the appetite. She will not be eating many; she will be wanting dainty plates which I cannot make,” explained the Frenchwoman, sticking pertinaciously to the future tense, as usual when she spoke English.