happy till they came. Ah, mon Dieu! how they make me suffer, these
people!"

"Do not blame them for Angelot's dishonourable weakness," said her
husband, sternly. "If your son had possessed reason and self-control,
which I have tried in vain all my life to teach him, none of all this
need have happened. There is no excuse for him."

"I am making none. I am very angry with him. I am not blaming your dear
Sainfoys. I only say that if they had never come, or if Providence had
given them an ugly daughter, this could not have happened. You will not
try to deny that, I suppose!"

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"Your logic is faultless, my dear Anne. If you had not married me, there
would have been no handsome boy to fall in love with a pretty girl. And
if La Mariniere had not been near Lancilly--"

"Are you ever serious?" she said, and swept out of the room.

His strong face was grave enough as he looked after her.

But in Angelot's presence there was no such philosophical trifling. He
was made to feel himself in deep disgrace with both his parents, and he
was young enough to feel it very keenly. After the first tremendous
scolding, they hardly spoke to him; he went in and out in a gloomy
silence most strange to the sunny life of La Mariniere. And at Les
Chouettes it was no better.

In truth, Angelot found his uncle Joseph's deep displeasure harder to
bear than that of any one else. There was something clandestine about
the affair which touched the little gentleman's sense of honour; his
code of manners and good breeding was also offended. He knew life; his
own younger days had been stormy; and even now, though respecting
morality, he was not strict or narrow. But such adventures as this of
Angelot's seemed to him on a lower plane of society than belonged to
Lancilly or La Mariniere. A secret meeting at night; climbing ivy like a
thief; making use of his familiarity with the old house to do what,
after all, was an injury as well as an offence to its owners,--all this
was matter of deep disgust to Monsieur Joseph.

"I thought Ange was a gentleman!" he said; and to Henriette, who with
bitter tears confessed to him her part in the story, he would not even
admire the daring spirit in which he and she had often rejoiced
together.

"Helene's fault, you say, child? No, we will not make that excuse for
him. If the poor girl was unhappy, there were other ways--"

"But what could he have done, papa? Now you are ver