listen very attentively and not interrupt me I will tell you word for word just what passed between Monseigneur and myself."
"Go on, Armand," said Madame; "I am burning with impatience and I'll promise not to interrupt."
As for Rose Marie, she said nothing, but from the expression in her eyes, it was obvious that she would listen attentively.
"Monseigneur sat at his desk and he was pleased to tell me to be seated. Then he said: 'Commence, my son; I am all attention.' He fixed his eyes upon me and I then began my narrative. 'My wife had a distant relative,' I said, 'married to an officer in the army of the English king. At a time of great pecuniary distress this fashionable lady bethought herself of her connection with the humble tailor of Paris and wrote to him an amiable letter suggesting a visit to his modest home.' That was so, was it not, Maman?" he asked, turning for confirmation to his buxom wife.
"Exactly so, Armand," she replied in assent; "except that the fashionable lady was at pains not to tell us that her husband was in prison for debt over in England and that she herself was almost destitute—and to think that I was such a simpleton as not to guess at the truth when she arrived with her little boy, and he with his shoes all in holes and—"
"Easy—easy, Mélanie," rejoined M. Legros tartly. "Am I telling you my adventures of this afternoon, or am I not?"
"But of a truth thou art telling us, Armand," replied fat Mme. Legros blandly.
"Then I pray you to remember that I said I would not be interrupted, else I shall lose the thread of my narration."
"But thou didst ask me a question, Armand, and I did answer."
"Then do not answer at such lengths, Mélanie," quoth the tailor sententiously, "or I shall be an hour getting through my tale, and that savoury stew yonder will be completely spoilt."
Harmony being thus restored under threat of so terrible a contingency, M. Legros now resumed his narrative.
"I did tell Monseigneur," he said with reproachful emphasis, "that at the time that Mistress Angélique Kestyon came on a visit to us in company with her small son, then aged six and a half years, but without nurse, serving or tiring woman of any kind, we were quite unaware of the distressful position in which she was, and in which she had left her lord and master over in England. I then explained to Monseigneur how Mistress Kestyon seemed over-pleased with the grace and beauty of our own child Rose Marie, who had just passed through her first birthday. She would insist on calling the wench Rosemary, pronouncing the name in an outlandish fashion, and saying that in England it stood for remembrance. A pretty conceit enough, seeing that our Rose Marie once seen would surely never be forgotten."
And a vigorous pressure on Rose Marie's waist brought an additional glow to the girl's bright eyes.
"At this point," continued M. Legros, "it pleased Monseigneur to show such marked interest in my story, that he appeared quite impatient and said with a show of irritation—which could but be flattering to me:—'Yes! yes! my son, but there is no need to give me all these trifling details. I understand that you are rich, are of somewhat humble calling, and have a daughter, and that the English lady was poor, if high-born, and had a son. Ergo! the children were betrothed.' Which, methinks showed vast penetration on the part of Monseigneur," added the worthy bonhomme naïvely, "and gracious interest in my affairs. Whereupon, warming to my narrative, I exclaimed: 'Not only betrothed, Monseigneur, but married with the full rites and ceremonials of our Holy Church as by law prescribed. My wife and I—so please Your Greatness—thought of the child's future. It has pleased God to bless my work and to endow me with vast wealth which in the course of time will all pass to our Rose Marie. But here in France, the great gentlemen would always look askance at the daughter of the man who made their coats and breeches; not so in England where trade, they say, is held in high esteem, and in order that our child should one day be as great a lady as any one in the land and as noble as she is beautiful, we wedded her to a high and mighty well-born English gentleman, who was own great nephew to one of the most illustrious noblemen in that fog-ridden country—the Earl of Stowmaries, so he is called over there, Monseigneur!' and you may be sure," continued M. Legros, "that I mentioned this fact with no small measure of pride."
"Well, and what did His Greatness say to that?" queried Mme. Legros, who would not curb her impatience, even for those few seconds whilst her man paused in order to take breath.
"Monseigneur did not seem over-pleased at seeing me display quite so much pride in empty titles and meaningless earthly dignities," rejoined M. Legros lightly. "His Greatness was pleased to rebuke me and to inform me that he himself was well acquainted with the distinguished English family who bears the name of Kestyon of Stowmaries. The Kestyons are all good Catholics and Monseigneur thought that this fact was of far greater importance than their worldly honours and their ancient lineage, and should have weighed much more heavily with us, Maman, when we chose a husband for our daughter."
"We should not have given Rose Marie to a Protestant, Armand; you should have told that to Monseigneur. No, not if he had been the King of England himself," retorted Mme. Legros indignantly.
"The King of England is as good a Catholic as any of us, so 'tis said," commented M. Legros, "but this is a digression, and I pray you, Mélanie, not to interrupt me again. I felt that His Greatness had lapsed into a somewhat irritable mood against me, which no doubt I fully deserved, more especially as Monseigneur did not then know—but 'tis I am digressing now," resumed the good man after a slight hesitation. "In less time than I can repeat it all, I had told Monseigneur how directly after the marriage ceremony had been performed, we found out how grossly we had been deceived, that le Capitaine Kestyon, the husband of Mistress Angélique, had been in a debtor's prison in London all the time that his wife was bragging to us about his high position and his aristocratic connections; we heard that the great Earl of Stowmaries not only refused to have anything to do with his nephew, who was a noted rogue and evil-doer, but that he had a son and three grandsons of his own, so that there were a goodly number of direct inheritors to his great title and vast estates. All this and more we heard after our darling child had been indissolubly tied to the son of the best-known scoundrel in the whole of England, and who moreover was penniless, deeply in debt, and spent the next ten years in extracting our hard-earned money from out our pockets."
The recollection of those same ten years seemed to have even now a terrible effect on the temper of M. Legros. Indignation at the memories his own last words evoked seemed momentarily to choke him. He pulled a voluminous and highly-coloured handkerchief from the pocket of his surcoat and moped his perspiring forehead, for choler had made him warm.
Mme. Legros—equally indignant in retrospect but impatient to hear Monseigneur's final pronouncement on the great subject—was nervously rapping a devil's tattoo on the table. Rose Marie's fair head had fallen forward on her breast. She had said nothing all along, but sat on her father's knee, listening with all her ears, for was not he talking about the people who would be her people henceforth, the land which would be her land, the man who of a truth was her lord and husband? But when Legros, with just indignation, recalled the deceits, the shifts, the mean, mercenary actions of those whose name she would bear through life, then the blush of excitement seemed to turn into one of shame, and two heavy tears fell from her eyes onto her tightly clasped hands.
"Father, Father!" cried fat Mme. Legros in horror, "cannot you see that you have made the child cry?"
"Then heaven punish me for a blundering ass," exclaimed Legros, with renewed cheerfulness. "Nay! nay! my little cabbage, there's naught to cry for now; have I not said that all is well? Those ten years are past and done with and eight more lie on the top of them—and if Monseigneur showed some impatience both at my pride and at my subsequent indignation, he was vastly interested, I can tell you that, when he heard that the son and three grandsons of the great English nobleman were by the will of God wrecked while pleasure-cruising together off the coast of Spain and all four of them drowned, and that the old lord himself did not long survive the terrible catastrophe, which had swept four direct inheritors of his vast wealth and ancient name off the face of the earth and into the sea. His Greatness became quite excited—and vastly amiable to me: 'Ah!' he said, 'then surely—you cannot mean—?'