Alone in the great bare study, the father looked at the little table, where the sun fell gently on the roses, all the fine preparations of welcome he had made under the approval of the old portraits, with the country of the past showing through the windows, and he felt himself abandoned like the leader of an army in the evening of his defeat. “Can a son so rebel against his father?” he reflected. “I spoke gently to him in the beginning. He grew irritable almost at once. How potent that woman is with him, and how I should like to break her! He’ll come back. It’s impossible that he should not. I’ll go and find him, in case----I was too distant with him perhaps. I wounded him unnecessarily. He loves her, poor child. He believes what she tells him. With her siren’s voice and her eyes of fire and all her pretty looks, she has cajoled him, and plays with him. Yes, I was wrong to defy them. Their scorn of hypocrisy and their revolt against society make these women more dangerous than those of other days.... He has run off to her, no doubt. She’ll stir him up against me, against his father. Against your father, Maurice, who, in his love for you, tried to keep you in the right track....” But he was not a man for useless lamentation. Searching some decision to be made, he went to his wife’s room, for it was there he customarily repaired for counsel in difficult moments. But he found the curtains drawn and Mrs. Roquevillard sleeping. Afflicted with a slow consumption, which had grown more pronounced as she grew older, she suffered often now from a facial neuralgia that completely exhausted her. Many a time, for years, he had opened her door like this, counting on her calm judgment and clear vision, and had had to steal away again without making any noise, thrown back on his own resources. He always felt less confidence in himself when she was depressed or laid low. He was worrying about their son: mothers are more close and have more influence than fathers. She could perhaps have conjured away this peril that threatened Maurice. “I am alone,” he thought sadly, standing by her sick bed. Quietly as a cat he stole out of the room. In the drawing-room he found Margaret writing, and from her serene presence drew, as always, some reassurance. “Here’s the one to help me,” he said to himself. “There’s no sister more devoted.” He went nearer to her, forcing himself to dissemble his anxiety as she raised her head and smiled. “What are you doing, little girl? I’ll wager you’re ordering something for your trousseau from some fine shop.” “Father, you’re nowhere near it.” “You’re writing to some of your school friends, then, to tell them of your engagement.” “No nearer.” “Then you’re reminding your fiancé that he dines here this evening.” “There’s no need of that.”