‘You a recluse of Port Royal!  I cannot believe in it,’ I said.  ’Tell me, Monsieur, is your motive despair?  For I know what your hopes have been.’

’Ah, Madame, then you also know what their overthrown has been, though you can never know what it has cost me.  Those eyes, as clear-sighted as they are beautiful, saw only too plainly the folly of expecting anything in the service I was ready to adopt, and scorned my hopes of thus satisfying her family.  I deserved it.  May she find happiness in the connection she has accepted.’

‘Stay, sir,’ I said.  ‘What has she accepted?  What have you heard?’

He answered with a paler look and strange smile that his clerk had been desired by M. de Poligny’s notary to let him see the parchments of the Ribaumont estate, preparatory to drawing up the contract of marriage, to be ready to be signed in a week’s time.’

‘Ah, sir,’ I said, ’you are a lawyer, and should know how to trust to such evidence.  The contract is impossible without my brother, who is too ill to hear of it, and my sister has uttered no word of consent, nor will she, even though she should remain unmarried for life.’

‘Will she forgive me?’ he exclaimed, as though ready to throw himself at my feet.

I told him that he must find out for himself, and he returned that I was an angel from heaven.  On the whole I felt more like a weak and talkative woman, a traitress to my mother; but then, as I looked at him, there was such depth of wounded affection, such worth and superiority to all the men I was in the habit of seeing, that it was impossible not to feel that if Annora had any right to choose at all she had chosen worthily.

But I thought of my mother, and would not commit myself further, and I rose to leave him; I had, however, waited too long.  The mob were surging along the streets, as they always did when the magistrates came home from the Parliament, howling, bellowing, and yelling round the unpopular ones.

‘Death to the Big Beard!’ was the cry, by which they meant good old Mathieu Mole, who had incurred their hatred for his loyalty, and then they halted opposite to the Maison Darpent to shout:  ’Death to the Big Beard and his jackal!’

‘Do not fear, Madame, it will soon be over,’ said Darpent.  ’It is a little amusement in which they daily indulge.  The torrent will soon pass by, and then I will do myself the honour of escorting you home.’

I thought I was much safer than he, and would have forbidden him, but he smiled, and said I must not deny him the pleasure of walking as far as the door of the Hotel de Nidemerle.

‘But why do they thus assail you and the Garde des Sceaux?’ I asked.