The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (have you read this book .TXT) 📖

if Madame de Quinet knows who I am, she will not expect me to hurry at her beck and call the first moment. Here, Rayonette, my bird, my beauty, thou must have a clean cap; ay, and these flaxen curls combed.’

‘Would you take the child?’

‘Would I go without Mademoiselle de Rambouillet? She is all her mother is, and more. There, now she is a true rose-bud, ready to perch on my arm. No, no bon pere. So great a girl is too much for you to carry. Don’t be afraid, my darling, we are not going to a sermon, no one will beat her; oh no, and if the insolent retainers and pert lacqueys laugh at her mother, no one will hurt her.’

‘Nay, child,’ said Maitre Gardon; ‘this is a well-ordered household, where contempt and scorn are not suffered. Only, dear, dear daughter, let me pray you to be your true self with the Duchess.’

Eustacie shrugged her shoulders, and had mischief enough in her to enjoy keeping her good father in some doubt and dread as he went halting wearily by her side along the much-decorated streets that marked the grand Gasche of Tarn and Tarascon. The Hotel de Quinet stretched out its broad stone steps, covered with vaultings, absolutely across the street, affording a welcome shade, and no obstruction where wheeled carriages never came.

All was, as Maitre Isaac had said, decorum itself. A couple of armed retainers, rigid as sentinels, waited on the steps; a grave porter, maimed in the wars opened the great door; half a dozen—laquais in sober though rich liveries sat on a bench in the hall, and had somewhat the air of having been set to con a lesson. Two of them coming respectfully forward, ushered Maitre Gardon and his companion to an ante-room, where various gentlemen, or pastors, or candidates—among them Samuel Mace—were awaiting a summons to the Duchess, or merely using it as a place of assembly. A page of high birth, but well schooled in steadiness of demeanour, went at once to announce the arrival; and Gardon and his companion had not been many moments in conversation with their acquaintance among the ministers, before the grave gentleman returned, apparently from his audience and the page, coming to Eustacie, intimated that she was to follow him to Madame le Duchesse’s presence.

He conducted her across a great tapestry-hung saloon, where twelve or fourteen ladies of all ages—from seventy to fifteen—sat at work: some at tapestry, some spinning, some making coarse garments for the poor. A great throne-like chair, with a canopy over it, a footstool, a desk and a small table before it, was vacant, and the work—a poor child’s knitted cap—laid down; but an elderly minister, seated at a carved desk, had not discontinued reading from a great black book, and did not even cease while the strangers crossed the room, merely making a slight inclination with his head, while the ladies half rose, rustled a slight reverence with their black, gray or russet skirts, but hardly lifted their eyes. Eustacie thought the Louvre had never been half so formidable or impressive.

The page lifted a heavy green curtain behind the canopy, knocked at a door, and, as it opened, Eustacie was conscious of a dignified presence, that, in spite of her previous petulance, caused her instinctively to bend in such a reverence as had formerly been natural to her; but, at the same moment, a low and magnificent curtsey was made to her, a hand was held out, a stately kiss was on her brow, and a voice of dignified courtesy said, ‘Pardon me, Madame la Baronne, for giving you this trouble. I feared that otherwise we could not safely meet.’

‘Madame is very good. My Rayonette, make thy reverence; kiss thy hand to the lady, my lamb.’ And the little one obeyed, gazing with her blue eyes full opened, and clinging to her mother.

‘Ah! Madame la Baronne makes herself obeyed,’ said Madame de Quinet, well pleased. ‘Is it then a girl?’

‘Yes, Madame, I could scarcely forgive her at first; but she has made herself all the dearer to me.’

‘It is a pity,’ said Madame de Quinet, ‘for yours is an ancient stem.’

‘Did Madame know my parents?’ asked Eustacie, drawn from her spirit of defiance by the equality of the manner with which she was treated.

‘Scarcely,’ replied the Duchess; but, with a smile, ‘I had the honour to see you married.’

‘Ah, then,’—Eustacie glowed, almost smiled, though a tear was in her eyes—‘you can see how like my little one is to her father,—a true White Ribaumont.’

The Duchess had not the most distinct recollection of the complexion of the little bridegroom; but Rayonette’s fairness was incontestable, and the old lady complimented it so as to draw on the young mother into confidence on the pet moonbeam appellation which she used in dread of exciting suspicion by using the true name of Berangere, with all the why and wherefore.

It was what the Duchess wanted. Imperious as some thought her, she would on no account have appeared to cross-examine any one whose essential nobleness of nature struck her as did little Eustacie’s at the first moment she saw her; and yet she had decided, before the young woman arrived, that her own good opinion and assistance should depend on the correspondence of Madame de Ribaumont’s history of herself with Maitre Gardon’s.

Eustacie had, for a year and a half, lived with peasants; and, indeed, since the trials of her life had really begun, she had never been with a woman of her own station to whom she could give confidence, or from whom she could look for sympathy. And thus a very few inquiries and tokens of interest from the old lady drew out the whole story, and more than once filled Madame de Quinet’s eyes with tears.

There was only one discrepancy; Eustacie could not believe that the Abbe de Mericour had been a faithless messenger. Oh, no! either those savage-looking sailors had played him false, or else her bele-mere would not send for her. ‘My mother-in-law never loved me,’ said Eustacie; ‘I know she never did. And now she has children by her second marriage, and no doubt would not see my little one preferred to them. I will not be HER suppliant.’

‘And what then would you do?’ said Madame de Quinet, with a more severe tone.

‘Never leave my dear father,’ said Eustacie, with a flash of eagerness; ‘Maitre Isaac I mean. He has been more to me than any—any one I ever knew—save——’

‘You have much cause for gratitude to him,’ said Madame de Quinet. ‘I honour your filial love to him. Yet, you have duties to this little one. You have no right to keep her from her position. You ought to write to England again. I am sure Maitre Isaac tells you so.’

Eustacie would have pouted, but the grave, kind authority of the manner prevented her from being childish, and she said, ‘If I wrote, it should be to my husband’s grandfather, who brought him up, designated him as his heir, and whom he loved with all his heart. But, oh, Madame, he has one of those English names! So dreadful! It sounds like Vol-au-vent, but it is not that precisely.’

Madame de Quinet smiled, but she was a woman of resources. ‘See, my friend,’ she said, ‘the pursuivant of