This was the position of affairs between the brother and sister when Madame de Mirfleur arrived to pay them a visit, and satisfy herself as to her son’s health. She came to them in her most genial mood, happy in Herbert’s recovery, and meaning to afford herself a little holiday, which was scarcely the aspect under which her former visits to her elder children had shown themselves. They had received her proposal with very dutiful readiness, but oddly enough, as one of the features of the change, it was Reine who wished for her arrival; not Herbert, though he, in former tunes, had always been the more charitable to his mother. Now his brow clouded at the prospect. His new-born independence seemed in danger. He felt as if mufflers and respirators, and all the old marks of bondage, were coming back to him in Madame de Mirfleur’s trunks. “If mamma comes with the intention of coddling me up again, and goes on about taking care,” he said, “by Jove! I tell you I’ll not stand it, Reine.” “Mamma will do what she thinks best,” said Reine, perhaps a little coldly; “but you know I think you are wrong, Bertie, though you will not pay any attention to me.” “You are just like a girl,” said Herbert, “never satisfied, never able to see the difference. What a change it is, by Jove, when a fellow gets into the world, and learns the right way of looking at things! If you go and set her on me, I’ll never forgive you; as if I could not be trusted to my own guidance--as if it were not I, myself, who was most concerned!”