But it was D’Argenton, who sat in full evening dress on the sofa, near the fire. The enemy was in Jack’s own seat, and the child was so overwhelmed by his disappointment that he with difficulty restrained his tears. There was a moment of restraint and discomfort felt by all three. Just then the door was thrown open, and dinner announced by Augustin. The dinner was long and tedious to little Jack. Have you ever felt so entirely out of place that you would have gladly disappeared from off the face of the globe, painfully conscious, withal, that had you so vanished, no one would have missed you? When Jack spoke, no one listened; his questions were unheard and his wants unheeded. The conversation between his mother and D’Argenton was incomprehensible to him, although he saw that his mother blushed more than once, and hastily raised her glass to her lips as if to conceal her rising color. Where were those gay little dinners when Jack sat close at his mother’s side and reigned an absolute king at the table? This recollection came to the boy’s mind just as Madame de Barancy offered a superb pear to D’Argenton. “That came from our friend at Tours,” said Jack, maliciously. D’Argenton, who was about to peel the fruit, dropped it upon his plate with a shrug of the shoulders. What an angry glance Ida threw upon her child! She had never looked at him in that way before. Jack did not venture to speak again, and the evening to him was but a dreary continuation of the repast. Ida and the poet talked in low voices, and in that confidential tone that indicates great intimacy. He told her of his sad childhood and of his early home. He described the ruined towers and the long corridors where the wind raged and howled. He then depicted his early struggles in the great city, the constant obstacles thrown in the way of the development of his genius, of his jealous rivals and literary enemies, and of the terrible epigrams which he had hurled upon them. “Then I uttered these stinging words.” This time she did not interrupt him, but listened with a smile, and her absorption was so great that when he ceased speaking she still listened, although nothing was to be heard in the salon save the ticking of the clock and the rustling of the leaves of the album that Jack, half asleep, was turning over. Suddenly she rose with a start. “Come, Jack, my love; call Constant to take you back to school. It is quite time.” “O, mamma!” said the child, sadly; but he dared not say that he generally remained much later. He did not wish to be troublesome to his mother, nor to meet again such an expression in her ordinarily serene and laughing eyes, as had so startled him at the dinner-table. She rewarded him for his self-control by a most loving embrace. “Good night, my child!” said D’Argenton, and he drew the child toward him as if to embrace him, but suddenly, with a movement of repulsion, turned aside as he had done at dinner from the fruit.