“Mon oncle, I love you with all my heart, but you are a man and you don’t understand.”
“That is absolutely true,” said he.
“So you see there is only one person I can explain it to, and that is my mother.”
Thus she completed the vicious little circle. And again the helpless Bigourdin walked across the salon and turned his back on her and muttered the incantation which brings relief to distracted man. But this time she went up to him and put an arm round his great body and laid her face against his sleeve.
“Tu sais, je suis bien malheureuse.”
It was a knife stuck in the honest fellow’s heart. He caught her to him and in his turn protested vehemently. He would not allow her to be unhappy. He would cut off his head rather than allow her to be unhappy. He would do anything—his French caution forbade an offer to send the Viriots packing—anything in reason to bring the colour back to her white cheeks.
Suddenly he had an inspiration which glowed all over his broad face and caused him to hold her out at arms’ length and laugh joyously.
“You can’t see your mother—but there is your good Aunt Clothilde. She will be a second mother to you. A woman so pious and so sympathetic. You will be able to tell her all your troubles. She has married a regiment of daughters. What she doesn’t know of young girls isn’t worth knowing. You are tired, you are ill. You need a change, a little holiday. Go and spend a month with her, and when you come back we’ll see what can be done with regard to Lucien. I’ll write to her now.”
And without waiting to hear her demure “Bien, mon oncle,” he escaped to the bureau where he should find the writing materials which did not profane the sacred primness of the salon, and plunged into correspondence. Félise, left alone, pondered for a moment or two, with faint wrinkling of her smooth forehead, and then, sketching a gesture of fatalistic resignation, went off to the kitchen, where a great special boiling of goose livers was in progress. On the way she met Martin carrying a load of porcelain pots. But she passed him by coldly; and for the rest of the day she scarcely threw at him a couple of words.
Meanwhile Bigourdin beamed over the letter to his elder sister Clothilde, a comfortable and almost opulent widow who lived at Chartres. They had not met for a dozen years, it is true, and she had only once seen Félise; but the sense of the family is very strong in France, especially where marriage alliances are concerned, and he had no doubt that she would telegraph, as requested, and authorise him to entrust Félise to her keeping. Verily it had been an inspiration. It was a solution of difficulties. The Viriots had given signs of an almost indecent hurry, which naturally had scared Félise. A month was a long time. Clothilde was a woman of experience, tact and good sense. She would know how to bring Félise to a reasonable state of mind. If she did not succeed—well—he was not the man to force his little Félise into a distasteful marriage. In any case he had a month’s respite.