After a time he put the child down, but still held his hand, came up to the rest of the company and mingled with it.  I could have wished they had been younger and more fashionable, instead of a poor old Scottish cavalier and his wife, my mother’s old contemporary Madame de Delincourt, and a couple of officers waiting for Solivet.  Annora was the only young brilliant creature there, and she had much too low an opinion of M. d’Aubepine to have a word to say to him, and continued to converse in English with old Sir Andrew Macniven about the campaigns of the Marquis of Montrose, both of them hurling out barbarous names that were enough to drive civilized ears out of the room.

Our unwilling guest behaved with tolerably good grace, and presently made his excuse to my mother and me, promising immediately to send back Solivet to his friends.  His wife went with him into the outer room, and when in a few minutes Armantine ran back to call me—–­

‘Papa is gone, and mama is crying,’ she said.

It was true, but they were tears of joy.  Cecile threw herself on my bosom perfectly overwhelmed with happiness, poor little thing, declaring that she owed it all to me, and that though he could not remain now, he had promised that she should hear from him.  He was enchanted with his children; indeed, how could he help it?  And she would have kept me up all night, discussing every hair of his moustache, every tone in the few words he had spoken to her.  When at last I parted from her I could not help being very glad.  Was the victory indeed won, and would my Philippe’s sister become a happy wife?

I trusted that now he had seen her he would be armed against Madame Croquelebois, who you will remember had been his grandmother’s dame de compagnie, and a sort of governess to him.  She had petted him as much as she had afterwards tyrannized over his poor little wife, and might still retain much influence over him, which she was sure to exert against me.  But at any rate he could not doubt of his wife’s adoration for him.

We waited in hope.  We heard of the Prince in attendance on the Queen-Regent, and we knew his aide-de-camp could not be spared, and we went on expecting all the morning and all the evening, assuring Cecile that military duty was inexorable, all the time that we were boiling over with indignation.

My mother was quite as angry as we were, and from her age and position could be more effective.  She met M. d’Aubepine one evening at the Louvre, and took him to task, demanding when his wife was to hear from him, and fairly putting him out of countenance in the presence of the Queen of England.  She came home triumphant at what she had done, and raised our hopes again, but in fact, though it impelled him to action, there was now mortified vanity added to indifference and impatience of the yoke.