Annette’s visits had fallen into this kind of veiled unfriendliness. She would have ceased coming to the Bowling Green at all if Achille’s pointed inquiries had not forced her into a semblance of civility, for she blamed Sappha, not only for her removal to the Mowatt house, but also for many a passage of words between Achille and herself that were less agreeable than they ought to have been, or would have been if Sappha had not formed the subject of discussion. And from Annette’s point of view, perhaps there was cause for some irritation. For a few hasty words which Sappha refused to ignore, there had been many hasty ones between herself and Achille; and, moreover, she did not feel the Mowatt house any equivalent for the roomy, aristocratic dwelling she had been compelled to abandon. Every annoyance that came up regarding this removal she blamed Sappha for; and though she affected to be pleased with the change, it had not only been a bitter mortification to her, but also brought other unpleasant consequences in its train. For it had been just the very kind of thing necessary to rouse Achille to a sense of small household tyranny that he had tolerated because he preferred toleration to assertion. But having once affirmed and exerted his right he had not again relinquished the authority of master. “I submitted too easily,” said Annette, when discussing the subject with her grandmother; “and now Achille just says ‘madame will do this,’ or ‘madame will go there,’ or ‘madame will say so-and-so,’ and I seem to have no power to say madame will not. Oh, grandmother, just for a few words! It is too much punishment! I was so happy, and now I am not happy at all. I sometimes wish that I could die.” “Annette, my dear one, thou must not make more of trouble than there is. Often I have told thee not to complain; after complaint there is no oblivion. If Achille can be polite, cannot thou be silent? With silence, one may plague the devil; but as for spoken words, no sponge wipes them out.” Thus and so events were progressing, as the spring of 1815 waxed to June and roses again. There was at this time some probability that the judge might be requested to go to England as legal adviser to agents sent by the government to arrange some question of boundary not very clearly stated; and if so, he proposed to take his wife and daughter with him.