"Why do they not send the girl away!" she cried. "Why not send her to a Paris convent till they find a husband for her! We do not want her here, with that pale face and those tragic eyes of hers, making havoc of our young men. I respect Hervé for refusing that horrible General, but why does he not take means to find some one else! They are beyond my understanding, Hervé and Adélaïde. I wish they had never come back, never brought that girl here to distract my Angelot. He was free and happy till they came. Ah, mon Dieu! how they make me suffer, these people!" "Do not blame them for Angelot's dishonourable weakness," said her husband, sternly. "If your son had possessed reason and self-control, which I have tried in vain all my life to teach him, none of all this need have happened. There is no excuse for him." "I am making none. I am very angry with him. I am not blaming your dear Sainfoys. I only say that if they had never come, or if Providence had given them an ugly daughter, this could not have happened. You will not try to deny that, I suppose!" He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Your logic is faultless, my dear Anne. If you had not married me, there would have been no handsome boy to fall in love with a pretty girl. And if La Marinière had not been near Lancilly--" "Are you ever serious?" she said, and swept out of the room. His strong face was grave enough as he looked after her. But in Angelot's presence there was no such philosophical trifling. He was made to feel himself in deep disgrace with both his parents, and he was young enough to feel it very keenly. After the first tremendous scolding, they hardly spoke to him; he went in and out in a gloomy silence most strange to the sunny life of La Marinière. And at Les Chouettes it was no better. In truth, Angelot found his uncle Joseph's deep displeasure harder to bear than that of any one else. There was something clandestine about the affair which touched the little gentleman's sense of honour; his code of manners and good breeding was also offended. He knew life; his own younger days had been stormy; and even now, though respecting morality, he was not strict or narrow. But such adventures as this of Angelot's seemed to him on a lower plane of society than belonged to Lancilly or La Marinière. A secret meeting at night; climbing ivy like a thief; making use of his familiarity with the old house to do what, after all, was an injury as well as an offence to its owners,--all this was matter of deep disgust to Monsieur Joseph. "I thought Ange was a gentleman!" he said; and to Henriette, who with bitter tears confessed to him her part in the story, he would not even admire the daring spirit in which he and she had often rejoiced together. "Hélène's fault, you say, child? No, we will not make that excuse for him. If the poor girl was unhappy, there were other ways--"