Mme. la Marquise's incredulity with regard to her niece's assertion lasted well into the afternoon. She could not bring herself to believe that de Maurel's hostile attitude towards all the inmates of Courson, which he had so steadily maintained since his first unfortunate visit, could have undergone such a material change in so short a time. She had looked on Fernande's childish boasting as mere nonsense, and during the past week had been eating out her heart in vain regret and remorse at her own folly, her own insentient pride, which had undoubtedly precipitated the catastrophe, and turned into an open feud what had, after all, only been a kind of skulking neutrality before. Mme. la Marquise was quite sure in her own mind that if she had been present throughout the interview between the two brothers, she would have known how to avert the quarrel. Once it had occurred, she felt that nothing would ever bridge it over. The short glimpse which she had that day of Ronnay de Maurel had told her plainly that he was, indeed, the son of his father--endowed with the same passionate and violent temperament and the same obstinacy. Some latent impulse--or perhaps mere idle curiosity, she thought--had prompted him to come the once. But unfortunately he had been made unwelcome, and Madame la Marquise knew that he would resent this most bitterly, and that he would prove as irreconcilable as her husband had been, as old Gaston de Maurel still was. Was it likely, therefore, that he would surrender at a word from a mere girl, and come and eat that humble pie at Courson which was bound to be very distasteful to him? Madame thought not; and in this she proved herself as ignorant of male temperament as her son was of feminine wiles. But Fernande was so positive that M. de Maurel would come, that something of her confidence communicated itself to the others. Her appearance in a new frock of delicate muslin, with tiny puffed sleeves and the shortest of waists, the folds of her long skirt clinging very closely to her girlish figure, finally brought Madame's incredulity to an end, and though nothing was done this time in preparation of M. de Maurel's coming, the excitement which pervaded the chateau was none the less acute.