Reine did not go back from her resolution; she did not change her mind, as her mother expected, and forgive Herbert’s étourderie. Reine could not look upon it as étourderie, and she was too deeply wounded to recover the shock easily; but I think she had the satisfaction of giving an almost equal shock to her brother, who, though he talked so about the limitation of a girl’s understanding, and the superiority of his own, was as much wounded as Reine was, when he found that his sister really meant to desert him. He did not say a word to her, but he denounced to his mother the insensibility of women, who only cared for a fellow so long as he did exactly what they wished, and could not endure him to have the least little bit of his own way. “I should never have heard anything of this if I had taken her about with me everywhere, and gone to bed at ten o’clock, as she wished,” he cried, with bitterness. “You have reason, mon ’Erbert,” said Madame de Mirfleur; “had you cared for her society, she would never have left you; but it is not amusing to sit at home while les autres are amusing themselves. One would require to be an angel for this.” “I never thought Reine cared for amusement,” said Herbert; “she never said so; she was always pleased to be at home; it must all have come on, her love for gayety, to spite me.” Madame de Mirfleur did not reply; she thought it wisest to say nothing in such a controversy, having, I fear, a deep-rooted contempt for the masculine understanding in such matters at least. En revanche, she professed the most unbounded reverence for it in other matters, and liked, as Miss Susan did, to consult “a man” in all difficult questions, though I fear, like Miss Susan, it was only the advice of one who agreed with her that she took. But with Herbert she was silent. What was the use? she said to herself. If he could not see that Reine’s indifference to amusement arose from her affection for himself, what could she say to persuade him of it? and it was against her principles to denounce him for selfishness, as probably an English mother would have done. “Que voulez-vous? it is their nature,” Madame de Mirfleur would have said, shrugging her shoulders. I am not sure, however, that this silence was much more satisfactory to Herbert than an explanation would have been. He was not really selfish, perhaps, only deceived by the perpetual homage that had been paid to him during his illness, and by the intoxicating sense of sudden emancipation now.