Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/114

104 and in the Vendée she was thought majestic, in spite of old clothes, of which she was fond and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote roy and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had an extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp of a clue, and viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that is, not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins and second cousins. There was a certain expectation that she would leave memoirs. In Mme. de Brécourt's eyes this pair were very shabby, they did not payer de mine—they fairly smelt of their province; "but for the reality of the thing," she often said to herself, "they are worth all of us. We are diluted and they are pure, and any one with an eye would see it." "The thing" was the legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even, a little, the grand air.

The Marquis de Cliché did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red satin drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson wanted to go out when he heard of the approach of Gaston's relations, and the young man had to instruct him that this wouldn't do.