And when he returned
to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold
your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Cotenoir would
assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced
by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the
grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the
designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style,
of immovable bulkiness.
There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana
was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could
not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with
Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacre Coeur, and the thing would be
done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the
Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his
finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his
absent beloved.
"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said
to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had
taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge
was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested!
Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an
Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Cotenoir, his place
at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no
harm.
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