CHAPTER XLV
Giovanna looked at Miss Susan with surprise, then with a little apprehension. It was her turn to be uneasy. “Que voulez-vous? que voulez-vous dire?” she said under her breath, endeavoring to catch Miss Susan’s eye. Miss Susan was a great deal too impassioned and absorbed even to notice the disturbed condition of her adversary. She knew herself to be surrounded by an eager audience, but yet in her soul she was alone, insensible to everything, moved only by a passionate impulse to relieve herself, to throw off the burden which was driving her mad. She did not even see Giovanna, who after walking round behind Herbert, trying to communicate by the eyes with the woman whom all this time she had herself subdued by covert threats, sat down at last at the head of the sofa, putting her hand, which Herbert took into his, upon it. Probably this sign of kindness stimulated Miss Susan, though I doubt whether she was conscious of it, something having laid hold upon her which was beyond her power to resist.
“I have a story to tell you, children,” she said, pulling instinctively with her hand at the throat of her dress, which seemed to choke her, “and a confession to make. I have been good, good enough in my way, trying to do my duty most of my life; but now at the end of it I have done wrong, great wrong, and sinned against you all. God forgive me! and I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve been trying to save myself from the – exposure – from the shame, God help me! I have thought of myself, when I ought to have thought of you all. Oh, I’ve been punished! I’ve been punished! But perhaps it is not yet too late. Oh, Herbert, Herbert! my dear boy, listen to me!”
“If you are going to say anything against Giovanna, you will lose your time, Aunt Susan,” said Herbert; and Giovanna leaned on the arm of the sofa, and kissed his forehead again in thanks and triumph.
“What I am going to say first is against myself,” said Miss Susan. “It is three years ago – a little more than three years; Farrel-Austin, who is dead, came and told me that he had found the missing people, the Austins whom you have heard of, whom I had sought for so long, and that he had made some bargain with them, that they should withdraw in his favor. You were very ill then, Herbert, thought to be dying; and Farrel-Austin – poor man, he is dead! – was our enemy. It was dreadful, dreadful to think of him coming here, being the master of the place. That was my sin to begin with. I thought I could bear anything sooner than that.”
Augustine came into the room at this moment. She came and went so noiselessly that no one even heard her; and Miss Susan was too much absorbed to note anything. The new-comer stood still near the door behind her sister, at first because it was her habit, and then, I suppose, in sympathy with the motionless attention of the others, and the continuance without a pause of Miss Susan’s voice.
“I meant no harm; I don’t know what I meant. I went to break their bargain, to show them the picture of the house, to make them keep their rights against that man. It was wicked enough. Farrel-Austin’s gone, and God knows what was between him and us; but to think of him here made me mad, and I went to try and break the bargain. I own that was what I meant. It was not, perhaps, Christian-like; not what your Aunt Augustine, who is as good as an angel, would have approved of; but it was not wicked, not wicked, if I had done no more than that!
“When I got there,” said Miss Susan, drawing a long breath, “I found them willing enough; but the man was old, and his son was dead, and there was nothing but daughters left. In the room with them was a daughter, a young married woman, a young widow – ”
“Yes, there was me,” said Giovanna. “To what good is all this narrative, Madame Suzanne? Me, I know it before, and Monsieur ’Erbert is not amused; look, he yawns. We have assez, assez, for to-day.”
“There was she; sitting in the room, a poor, melancholy, neglected creature; and there was the other young woman, Gertrude, pretty and fair, like an English girl. She was – going to have a baby,” said Miss Susan, even at that moment hesitating in her old maidenliness before she said it, her old face coloring softly. “The devil put it into my head all at once. It was not premeditated; I did not make it up in my mind. All at once, all at once the devil put it into my head! I said suddenly to the old woman, to old Madame Austin, ‘Your daughter-in-law is in the same condition?’ She was sitting down crouched in a corner. She was said to be sick. What was more natural,” cried poor Miss Susan looking round, “than to think that was the cause?”
Perhaps it was the first time she had thought of this excuse. She caught at the idea with heat and eagerness, appealing to them all. “What more natural than that I should think so? She never rose up; I could not see her. Oh, children,” cried Miss Susan, wringing her hands, “I cannot tell how much or how little wickedness there was in my first thought; but answer me, wasn’t it natural? The old woman took me up in a moment, took up more – yes, I am sure – more than I meant. She drew me away to her room, and there we talked of it. She did not say to me distinctly that the widow was not in that way. We settled,” she said after a pause, with a shiver and gasp before the words, “that anyhow – if a boy came – it was to be Giovanna’s boy and the heir.”
Herbert made an effort at this moment to relinquish Giovanna’s hand, which he had been holding all the time; not, I believe, because of this information, which he scarcely understood as yet, but because his arm was cramped remaining so long in the same position; but she, as was natural, understood the movement otherwise. She held him for a second, then tossed his hand away and sprang up from her chair. “Après?” she cried, with an insolent laugh. “Madame Suzanne, you radotez, you are too old. This goes without saying that the boy is Giovanna’s boy.”
“Yes, we know all this,” said Herbert, pettishly. “Aunt Susan, I cannot imagine what you are making all this fuss and looking so excited about. What do you mean? What is all this about old women and babies? I wish you would speak out if you have anything to say. Giovanna, come here.”
“Yes,” she said, throwing herself on the sofa beside him; “yes, mon Herbert, mon bien-aimé. You will not abandon me, whatever any one may say?”
“Herbert,” cried Miss Susan, “let her alone, let her alone, for God’s sake! She is guilty, guiltier than I am. She made a pretence as her mother-in-law told her, pretended to be ill, pretended to have a child, kept up the deceit – how can I tell how long? – till now. Gertrude is innocent, whose baby was taken; she thought it died, poor thing, poor thing! but Giovanna is not innocent. All she has done, all she has said, has been lies, lies! The child is not her child; it is not the heir. She has thrust herself into this house, and done all this mischief, by a lie. She knows it; look at her. She has kept her place by threatening me, by holding my disgrace before my eyes; and now, Herbert, my poor boy, my poor boy, she will ruin you. Oh, put her away, put her away!”
Herbert rose up, trembling in his weakness. “Is this true, Giovanna?” he said, turning to her piteously. “Have you anything to say against it? Is it true?”
Reine, who had been standing behind, listening with an amazement beyond the reach of words, came to her brother’s side, to support him at this terrible moment; but he put her away. Even Miss Susan, who was the chief sufferer, fell into the background. Giovanna kept her place on the sofa, defiant, while he stood before her, turning his back upon the elder offender, who felt this mark of her own unimportance, even in the fever of her excitement and passion.
“Have you nothing to say against it?” cried Herbert, with anguish in his voice. “Giovanna! Giovanna! is it true?”
Giovanna shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “Mon Dieu,” she said, “I did what I was told. They said to me, ‘Do this,’ and I did it; was it my fault? It was the old woman who did all, as Madame Suzanne says – ”
“We are all involved together, God forgive us!” cried Miss Susan, bowing her head into her hands.
Then there was a terrible pause. They were all silent, all waiting to hear what Herbert had to say, who, by reason of being most deeply involved, seemed suddenly elevated into the judge. He went away from the sofa where Giovanna was, and in front of which Miss Susan was sitting, as far away as he could get, and began to walk up and down the room in his excitement. He took no further notice of Giovanna, but after a moment, pausing in his angry march, said suddenly, “It was all on Farrel-Austin’s account you plunged into crime like this? Silence, Reine! it is crime, and it is she who is to blame. What in the name of heaven had Farrel-Austin done to you that you should avenge yourself upon us all like this?”
“Forgive me, Herbert!” said Miss Susan, faintly; “he was to have married Augustine, and he forsook her, jilted her, shamed her, my only sister. How could I see him in this house?”
And then again there was a pause. Even Reine made no advance to the culprit, though her heart began to beat loudly, and her indignation was mingled with pity. Giovanna sat gloomy; drumming with her foot upon the carpet. Herbert had resumed his rapid pacing up and down. Miss Susan sat in the midst of them, hopeless, motionless, her bowed head hidden in her hands, every help and friendly prop dropped away from her, enduring to the depths the bitterness of her punishment, yet, perhaps, with a natural reaction, asking herself, was there none, none of all she had been kind to, capable of a word, a look, a touch of pity in this moment of her downfall and uttermost need? Both Everard and Reine felt upon them that strange spell which often seems to freeze all outward action in a great emergency, though their hearts were swelling. They had both made a forward step; when suddenly, the matter was taken out of their hands. Augustine, perhaps, was more slow than any of them, out of her abstraction and musing, to be roused to what was being said. But the last words had supplied a sharp sting of reality which woke her fully, and helped her to understand. As soon as she had mastered it, she went up swiftly and silently to her sister, put her arms round her, and drew away the hands in which she had buried her face.
“Susan,” she said, in a voice more real and more living than had been heard from her lips for years, “I have heard everything. You have confessed your sin, and God will forgive you. Come with me.”
“Austine! Austine!” cried poor Miss Susan, shrinking, dropping to the floor at the feet of the immaculate creature who was to her as a saint.
“Yes, it is I,” said Augustine. “Poor Susan! and I never knew! God will forgive you. Come with me.”
“Yes,” said the other, the elder and stronger, with the humility of a child; and she got up from where she had thrown herself, and casting a pitiful look upon them all, turned round and gave her hand to her sister. She was weak with her excitement, and exhausted as if she had risen from a long illness. Augustine drew her sister’s hand through her arm, and without another word, led her away. Reine rushed after them, weeping and anxious, the bonds loosed that seemed to have congealed her. Augustine put her back, not unkindly, but with decision. “Another time, Reine. She is going with me.”
They were all so overawed by this sudden action that even Herbert stopped short in his angry march, and Everard, who opened the door for their exit, could only look at them, and could not say a word. Miss Susan hung on Augustine’s arm, broken, shattered, feeble; an old woman, worn out and fainting. The recluse supporting her, with a certain air of strength and pride, strangely unlike her nature, walked on steadily and firmly, looking, as was her wont, neither to the right hand nor the left. All her life Susan had been her protector, her supporter, her stay. Now their positions had changed all in a moment. Erect and almost proud she walked out of the room, holding up the bowed-down, feeble figure upon her arm. And the young people, all so strangely, all so differently affected by this extraordinary revelation, stood blankly together and looked at each other, not knowing what to say, when the door closed. None of the three Austins spoke to or looked at Giovanna, who sat on the sofa, still drumming with her foot upon the carpet. When the first blank pause was over, Reine went up to Herbert and put her arm through his.
“Oh, forgive her, forgive her!” she cried.
“I will never forgive her,” he said wildly; “she has been the cause of it all. Why did she let this go on, my God! and why did she tell me now?”
Giovanna sat still, beating her foot on the carpet, and neither moved nor spoke.
As for Susan and Augustine, no one attempted to follow them. No one thought of anything further than a withdrawal to their rooms of the two sisters, united in a tenderness of far older date than the memories of the young people could reach; and I don’t even know whether the impulse that made them both turn through the long passage toward the porch was the same. I don’t suppose it was. Augustine thought of leading her penitent sister to the Almshouse chapel, as she would have wished should be done to herself in any great and sudden trouble; whereas an idea of another kind entered at once into the mind of Susan, which, beaten down and shaken as it was, began already to recover a little after having thrown off the burden. She paused a moment in the hall, and took down a gray hood which was hanging there, like Augustine’s, a covering which she had adopted to please her sister on her walks about the roads near home. It was the nearest thing at hand, and she caught at it, and put it on, as both together with one simultaneous impulse they bent their steps to the door. I have said that the day was damp and dismal and hopeless, one of those days which make a despairing waste of a leafy country. Now and then there would come a miserable gust of wind, carrying floods of sickly yellow leaves from all the trees, and in the intervals a small mizzling rain, not enough to wet anything, coming like spray in the wayfarers’ faces, filled up the dreary moments. No one was out of doors who could be in; it was worse than a storm, bringing chill to the marrow of your bones, weighing heavy upon your soul. The two old sisters, without a word to each other, went out through the long passage, through the porch in which Miss Susan had sat and done her knitting so many Summers through. She took no farewell look at the familiar place, made no moan as she left it. They went out clinging to each other, Augustine erect and almost proud, Susan bowed and feeble, across the sodden wet lawn, and out at the little gate in Priory Lane. They had done it a hundred and a thousand times before; they meant, or at least Miss Susan meant, to do it never again; but her mind was capable of no regret for Whiteladies. She went out mechanically, leaning on her sister, yet almost mechanically directing that sister the way Susan intended to go, not Augustine. And thus they set forth into the Autumn weather, into the mists, into the solitary world. Had the departure been made publicly with solemn farewells and leave-takings, they would have felt it far more deeply. As it was, they scarcely felt it at all, having their minds full of other things. They went along Priory Lane, wading through the yellow leaves, and along the road to the village, where Augustine would have turned to the left, the way to the Almshouses. They had not spoken a word to each other, and Miss Susan leaned almost helplessly in her exhaustion upon her sister; but nevertheless she swayed Augustine in the opposite direction across the village street. One or two women came out to the cottage doors to look after them. It was a curious sight, instead of Miss Augustine, gray and tall and noiseless, whom they were all used to watch in the other direction, to see the two gray figures going on silently, one so bowed and aged as to be unrecognizable, exactly the opposite way. “She have got another with her, an old ’un,” the women said to each other, and rubbed their eyes, and were not half sure that the sight was real. They watched the two figures slowly disappearing round the corner. It came on to rain, but the wayfarers did not quicken their pace. They proceeded slowly on, neither saying a word to the other, indifferent to the rain and to the yellow leaves that tumbled on their path. So, I suppose, with their heads bowed, and no glance behind, the first pair may have gone desolate out of Paradise. But they were young, and life was before them; whereas Susan and Augustine, setting out forlorn upon their new existence, were old, and had no heart for another home and another life.
CHAPTER XLVI
When a number of people have suddenly been brought together accidentally by such an extraordinary incident as that I have attempted to describe, it is almost as difficult for them to separate, as it is to know what to do, or what to say to each other. Herbert kept walking up and down the room, dispelling, or thinking he was dispelling, his wrath and excitement in this way. Giovanna sat on the sofa motionless, except her foot, with which she kept on beating the carpet. Reine, after trying to join herself to her brother, as I have said, and console him, went back to Everard, who had gone to the window, the safest refuge for the embarrassed and disturbed. Reine went to her betrothed, finding in him that refuge which is so great a safeguard to the mind in all circumstances. She was very anxious and unhappy, but it was about others, not about herself; and though there was a cloud of disquietude and pain upon her, as she stood by Everard’s side, her face turned toward the others, watching for any new event, yet Reine’s mind had in itself such a consciousness of safe anchorage, and of a refuge beyond any one’s power to interfere with, that the very trouble which had overtaken them, seemed to add a fresh security to her internal well-being. Nothing that any one could say, nothing that any one could do, could interfere between her and Everard; and Everard for his part, with that unconscious selfishness à deux, which is like no other kind of selfishness, was not thinking of Herbert, or Miss Susan, but only of his poor Reine, exposed to this agitation and trouble.
“Oh, if I could only carry you away from it all, my poor darling!” he said in her ear.
Reine said, “Oh, hush, Everard, do not think of me,” feeling, indeed, that she was not the chief sufferer, nor deserving, in the present case, of the first place in any one’s sympathy; yet she was comforted. “Why does not she go away? – oh, if she would but go away!” cried Reine, and stood thus watching, consoled by her lover, anxious and vigilant, but yet not the person most deserving of pity, as she herself felt.
While they thus remained as Miss Susan had left them, not knowing how to get themselves dispersed, there came a sudden sound of carriage wheels, and loud knocking at the great door on the other side of the house, the door by which all strangers approached.
“Oh, as if we were not bad enough already, here are visitors!” cried Reine. And even Herbert seemed to listen, irritated by the unexpected commotion. Then followed the sound of loud voices, and a confused colloquy. “I must go and receive them, whoever it is,” said Reine, with a moan over her fate. After awhile steps were heard approaching, and the door was thrown open suddenly. “Not here, not here,” cried Reine, running forward. “The drawing-room, Stevens.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” said Stevens, flushed and angry. “It ain’t my fault. I can’t help it. They won’t be kep’ back, Miss Reine,” he cried, bending his head down over her. “Don’t be frightened. It’s the hold foreign gent – ”
“Not here,” cried Reine again. “Oh, whom did you say? Stevens, I tell you not here.”
“But he is here; the hold foreign gent,” said Stevens, who seemed to be suddenly pulled back from behind by somebody following him. If there had been any laughter in her, I think Reine would have laughed; but though the impulse gleamed across her distracted mind, the power was wanting. And there suddenly appeared, facing her, in the place of Stevens, two people, who took from poor Reine all inclination to laugh. One of them was an old man, spruce and dapper, in the elaborate travelling wraps of a foreigner, of the bourgeois class, with a comforter tied round his neck, and a large great coat with a hood to it. The other was a young woman, fair and full, with cheeks momentarily paled by weariness and agitation, but now and then dyed deep with rosy color. These two came to a momentary stop in their eager career, to gaze at Reine, but finally pushing past her, to her great amazement, got before her into the room which she had been defending from them.
“I seek Madame Suzanne! I seek the lady!” said the old man.
At the sound of his voice Giovanna sprang to her feet; and as soon as they got sight of her, the two strangers made a startled pause. Then the young woman rushed forward and laid hold of her by the arm.
“Mon bébé! mon enfant! donne-moi mon bébé!” she said.
“Eh bien, Gertrude! c’est toi!” cried Giovanna. She was roused in a moment from the quiescent state, sullen or stupefied, in which she had been. She seemed to rise full of sudden energy and new life. “And the bon papa, too! Tiens, this is something of extraordinary; but, unhappily, Madame Suzanne has just left us, she is not here. Suffer me to present to you my beau-père, M. Herbert; my belle-sœur Gertrude, of whom you have just heard. Give yourself the trouble to sit down, my parents. This is a pleasure very unattended. Had Madame Suzanne known – she talked of you toute à l’heure – no doubt she would have stayed – ”
“Giovanna,” cried the old man, trembling, “you know, you must know, why we are here. Content this poor child, and restore to her her baby. Ah, traître! her baby, not thine. How could I be so blind – how could I be so foolish, and you so criminal, Giovanna? Your poor belle-mère has been ill, has been at the point of death, and she has told us all.”
“Mon enfant!” cried the young woman, clasping her hands. “My bébé, Giovanna; give me my bébé, and I pardon thee all.”
“Ah! the belle-mère has made her confession, then!” said Giovanna. “C’est ça? Poor belle-mère! and poor Madame Suzanne! who has come to do the same here. But none say ‘Poor Giovanna.’ Me, I am criminal, va! I am the one whom all denounce; but the others, they are then my victims, not I theirs!”
“Giovanna, Giovanna, I debate not with thee,” cried the old man. “We say nothing to thee, nothing; we blame not, nor punish. We say, give back the child, – ah, give back the child! Look at her, how her color changes, how she weeps! Give her her bébé. We will not blame, nor say a word to thee, never!”
“No! you will but leave me to die of hunger,” said Giovanna, “to die by the roads, in the fields, qu’importe? I am out of the law, me. Yet I have done less ill than the others. They were old, they had all they desired; and I was young, and miserable, and made mad – ah, ma Gertrude! by thee, too, gentle as thou look’st, even by thee!”
“Giovanna, Giovanna!” cried Gertrude, throwing herself at her feet. Her pretty upturned face looked round and innocent, like a child’s, and the big tears ran down her cheeks. “Give me my bébé, and I will ask your pardon on my knees.”
Giovanna made a pause, standing upright, with this stranger clinging to her dress, and looked round upon them all with a strange mixture of scorn and defiance and emotion. “Messieurs,” she said, “and mademoiselle! you see what proof the bon Dieu has sent of all Madame Suzanne said. Was it my doing? No! I was obedient, I did what I was told: but, voyons! it will be I who shall suffer. Madame Suzanne is safe. You can do nothing to her; in a little while you will lofe her again, as before. The belle-mère, who is wicked, wickedest of all, gets better, and one calls her poor bonne-maman, pauvre petite mère! But me! I am the one who shall be cast away, I am the one to be punished; here, there, everywhere, I shall be kicked like a dog – yes, like a dog! All the pardon, the miséricorde will be for them – for me the punishment. Because I am the most weak! because I am the slave of all – because I am the one who has excuse the most!”
She was so noble in her attitude, so grand in her voice and expression, that Herbert stood and gazed at her like one spellbound. But I do not think she remarked this, being for the moment transported out of herself by a passionate outburst of feeling – sense of being wronged – pity for herself, defiance of her enemies; and a courage and resolution mingling with all which, if not very elevated in their origin, were intense enough to give elevation to her looks. What an actress she would have made! Everard thought regretfully. He was already very pitiful of the forsaken creature at whom every one threw a stone.
“Giovanna, Giovanna!” cried the weeping Gertrude, clinging to her dress, “hear me! I will forgive you, I will love you. But give me my bébé, Giovanna, give me my child!”
Giovanna paused again, looking down upon the baby face, all blurred with crying. Her own face changed from its almost tragic form to a softer aspect. A kind of pity stole over it, then another and stronger sentiment. A gleam of humor came into her eyes. “Tenez,” she said, “I go to have my revenge!” and drawing her dress suddenly from Gertrude’s clasp, she went up to the bell, rang it sharply, and waiting, facing them all with a smile, “Monsieur Stevens,” she said, with the most enchanting courtesy, when the butler appeared, “will you have the goodness to bring to me, or to send to me, my boy, the little mas-ter Jean?”
After she had given this order, she stood still waiting, all the profounder feeling of her face disappearing into an illumination of gayety and fun, which none of the spectators understood. A few minutes elapsed while this pause lasted. Martha, who thought Master Jean was being sent for to see company, hastily invested him in his best frock and ribbons. “And be sure you make your bow pretty, and say how do do,” said innocent Martha, knowing nothing of the character of the visit, nor of the tragical change which had suddenly come upon the family life. The child came in with all the boldness of the household pet into the room in which so many excited people were waiting for him. His pretty fair hair was dressed according to the tradition of the British nursery, in a great flat curl on the top of his little head. He had his velvet frock on, with scarlet ribbons, and looked, as Martha proudly thought, “a little gentleman,” every inch of him. He looked round him with childish complaisance as he came in, and made his little salute, as Giovanna had taught him. But when Gertrude rushed toward him, as she did at once, and throwing herself on her knees beside him, caught him in her arms and covered him with kisses, little Jean was taken violently by surprise. A year’s interval is eternity to such a baby. He knew nothing about Gertrude. He cried, struggled, fought to be free, and finally struck at her with his sturdy little fists.
“Mamma, mamma!” cried little Jean, holding out appealing arms to Giovanna, who stood at a little distance, her fine nostrils expanded, a smile upon her lip, a gleam of mischief in her eyes.
“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.