“My sister and I are happily independent; and you are aware that the proprietor of Whiteladies is a young man of twenty-one, not at all anxious about an heir, and indeed likely to marry and have children of his own.” “To marry?--to have children?” said M. Guillaume in unaffected dismay. “But, pardon me, M. Herbert is dying. It is an affair of a few weeks, perhaps a few days. This is what you said.” “I said so eighteen months ago, M. Guillaume. Since then there has been a most happy change. Herbert is better. He will soon, I hope, be well and strong.” “But he is poitrinaire,” said the old man, eagerly. “He is beyond hope. There are rallyings and temporary recoveries, but these maladies are never cured--never cured. Is it not so? You said this yesterday, to help me with Giovanna, and I thanked you. But it cannot be, it is not possible. I will not believe it!--such maladies are never cured. And if so, why then--why then!--no, Madame deceives herself. If this were the case, it would be all in vain, all that has been done; and le petit--” “I am not to blame, I hope, for le petit,” said Miss Susan, trying to smile, but with a horrible constriction at her heart. “But why then?” said M. Guillaume, bewildered and indignant, “why then? I had settled all with M. Farrel-Austin. Madame has misled me altogether; Madame has turned my house upside down. We were quiet, we had no agitations; our daughter-in-law, if she was not much use to us, was yet submissive, and gave no trouble. But Madame comes, and in a moment all is changed. Giovanna, whom no one thought of, has a baby, and it is put into our heads that he is the heir to a great château in England. Bah! this is your château--this maison de campagne, this construction partly of wood--and now you tell me that le petit is not the heir!” Miss Susan stood still and looked at the audacious speaker. She was stupefied. To insult herself was nothing, but Whiteladies! It appeared to her that the earth must certainly open and swallow him up. “Not that I regret your château!” said the linendraper, wild with wrath. “If it were mine, I would pull it down, and build something which should be comme il faut, which would last, which should not be of brick and wood. The glass would do for the fruit-houses, early fruits for the market; and with the wood I should make a temple in the garden, where ces dames could drink of the tea! It is all it is good for--a maison de campagne, a house of farmers, a nothing--and so old! the floors swell upward, and the roofs bow downward. It is eaten of worms; it is good for rats, not for human beings to live in. And le petit is not the heir! and it is Guillaume Austin of Bruges that you go to make a laughing-stock of, Madame Suzanne! But it shall not be--it shall not be!”