“Wait, dear,” was her answer. At length, however, he seized her cloak, and wrapping it around her, drew her away. There was no train at that hour, and indeed no omnibus; fortunately a fiacre was passing, which they hailed. But the newly married pair decided to return on foot through the Bois de Vincennes. The fresh morning air was delicious after the heat of the restaurant; the child slept sweetly on Bélisaire’s shoulder, and did not even awake when he was placed in his bed. Madame Bélisaire threw aside her wedding-dress, assumed a plainer one, and at once entered on the duties of the day. CHAPTER XXI. EFFECTS OF POETRY. The first visit of Madame de Barancy at Etoilles gave Jack great pleasure and also great anxiety. He was proud of his mother, but he knew her, nevertheless, to be weak and rash. He feared Cécile’s calm judgment and intuitive perceptions, keen and quick as they sometimes are in the young. The first few moments tranquillized him a little. The emphatic tone in which Ida addressed Cécile as “my daughter” was all well enough, but when under the influence of a good breakfast Madame de Barancy dropped her serious air and began some of her extravagant stories, Jack felt all his apprehensions revive. She kept her auditors on the _qui vive_. Some one spoke of relatives that M. Rivals had in the Pyrenees. “Ah, yes, the Pyrenees!” she sighed. “Gavarni, the Mer de Glace, and all that. I made that journey fifteen years ago with a friend of my family, the Duc de Casares, a Spaniard. I made his acquaintance at Biarritz in a most amusing way!” Cécile having said how fond she was of the sea, Ida again began,— “Ah, my love, had you seen it as I have seen it in a tempest off Palma! I was in the saloon with the captain, a coarse sort of man, who insisted on my drinking punch. I refused. Then the wretch got very angry, and opened the window, took me just at the waist, and held me above the water in the lightning and rain.” Jack tried to cut in two these dangerous recitals, but they came to life again, like those reptiles which, however mutilated, still retain life and animation.