Читать книгу Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists онлайн

29 страница из 60

‘That I’m not ... you know nothing of my humour, Jacques.... I know best about myself, I am abhorrent of aught that is coarse and ungallant.... I am to seek why you should make other people share your faults, you——’ Madeleine had tears of rage in her eyes.

‘You are a sprouting Madame Pilou, beard and all!’ teased Jacques. ‘No, you’re not,’ and he stopped abruptly. It was his way suddenly to get bored with a subject he had started himself.

‘But Madeleine,’ began Madame Troqueville, ‘what, in Heaven’s name, prompted you to refuse to meet Mademoiselle de Scutary?’

‘De S-c-u-d-é-r-y,’ corrected Madeleine, enunciating each letter with weary irritation.

‘De Scudéry, then. You are such a goose, my child; in the name of Our Lady, how can you expect——’ and Madame Troqueville began to work herself up into a frenzy, such as only Madeleine was able to arouse in her.

But Madeleine said with such earnestness, ‘Pray mother, let the matter be,’ that Madame Troqueville said no more.

Supper being over, Monsieur Troqueville, wearing an abstracted, important air, took his hat and cloak and went out, and Madame Troqueville went to her spinning-wheel.