The chevalier, who could read things hazily, as in the dark with a horn lantern, wondered why his brother was so civil to the routed one. He led her to the carriage with a ceremony suited to an archduchess, and stood under the archway where the portcullis used to hang, airily kissing his finger-tips till the berline was out of sight. CHAPTER XV. THE SITUATION CHANGES. Gabrielle's injunctions to Monsieur Galland were concise. The maréchal must not be told too much. The good solicitor must keep to himself her worn and haggard aspect. Nor must he relate aught of the eloquent meeting between the mother and her dear ones. The children looked on her with a vague alarm as on one of whom they had learned to be suspicious from hearing unpleasant things. He had been obliged to wipe away another tear--it was a wonder that there remained so much liquid in one so dry and shrunken--ere he stole from the room on tiptoe, leaving the yearning heart to recover its lost sway. And now began for Madame de Gange a lull of peace, and as her troubled soul regained its equilibrium she marvelled that she should have been patient for so long. The dear father's mandate had been a wand of harlequin transforming with a touch the Cave of the Black Gnome into the Calm Retreat of the Serene Spirit. For several months nothing occurred that was of import to the recluses. By a seeming paradox, the remnants of the affection she had once borne her husband being destroyed, she found that she could get on better with him. There were no more throes of jealousy, no irritating scenes, no midnight weepings with the morning reproach of swollen eyelids--simply because she had renounced a desire for the moon, as he had so often wished she might. That he should shut himself up in his study and pore over the secrets of science, avoiding his better half, was no longer a cause for grief; she cared no more how this time was passed. Had she not got back the stolen treasures in whose interest alone she prayed for a span of life? For many weary months she had been bereaved, and it was an intense delight--a dazzling peep into heaven--to have them once again all to herself with no shadow to fall between. What a joy to mark how the minds of Victor and Camille had expanded in the interval; how the young plants had shot up, putting out fresh leaves of tender green and fragrant blossoms of rich intelligence. The mother thanked God that, search as anxiously as she might, she could find no trace of evil in the children's minds. The singular specimen of womanhood, who happily was gone for ever, had been a real mother to them, had tended them as if they were her own, had packed in the little heads a store of information that to Gabrielle was a source of awe. A very curious mixture was Mademoiselle Brunelle. What she had herself remarked as to the conflicting elements in the female bosom was more true than the conclusion which followed.