From this consideration the Marquise passed to that of another imminent change which would, on the other hand, make a vast difference to her. Fate had preserved her son to her long unmarried. Lucienne d’Aucourt, who had left her convent at the age of fifteen nearly four years ago, had spent the ensuing years with her mother—transferred in 1778 to the newly-formed household of the Princess Elisabeth—in her apartments at Versailles, and, afterwards, at the Tuileries, whither Gilbert went twice a year to pay his respects. But the shock of the disastrous flight to Varennes had killed Madame d’Aucourt within three months. Her death would have seemed the signal for Gilbert to claim his bride, but the Comtesse’s last wish was that her daughter should not be married until she had reached the unusually late age of nineteen. Respect for this desire and the friendship which the Princess Elisabeth extended to the daughter of her lady-in-waiting induced Gilbert, unwillingly, to postpone the ceremony, and Lucienne remained at Court under the technical chaperonage of an old cousin of her mother’s, Madame de Fontenelle. But her nineteenth birthday was advancing; by the autumn the château would know a new mistress. It was the plain duty of the present châtelaine to school herself to the thought; repugnance, as she recognised, was insensate, for she was genuinely fond of Lucienne, who was, moreover, the bride of her own choosing. She took up again the little book of devotions as if to find there a corrective for her own rather jealous thoughts.