Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/33

Rh At dinner the conversation was general, and the family, without lingering over the events of the morning, accorded only an awkward attention to Laurent, who was seated between his great-aunt and Monsieur Dobouziez. He addressed no word to Laurent excepting to exhort him to duty, good behaviour, and common sense, three words sufficiently abstract to a boy who had barely received his first communion.

His kindly great-aunt wished to sympathize more tenderly with the orphan's grief, but she feared being taxed with weakness by the master and mistress of the house, and doing him an ill turn with them. She even tried to staunch his tears through fear that his prolonged grief would seem ungrateful to the two people who, from that time forth, were to take the place of his father and mother. But, when one is but eleven years old, one lacks tact, and her whispered injunctions provoked only a recrudescence of tears.

Through the mist that veiled his eyes, Laurent, fearful and panting like a hunted bird, surreptitiously examined the group around the table.

Madame Dobouziez, his cousin Lydia, was enthroned directly across the table from her husband. A little woman, slightly bent, her skin was yellow, and shrivelled like that of a prune. Her hair was black and shiny and dressed in thick coils that hid her forehead and touched the thick, heavy eyebrows that shaded her eyes, black also, gelatinous and almost popping out of her head. Her face was singularly inexpressive in its masculine features, thin and colorless lips, and flattened nose beneath the nostrils of which a little down was perceptible. Her voice was harsh and guttural, bringing to mind the cry of a guinea hen. A heart cold and contracted rather than entirely absent; she had