"It is--ah, but thou must not know yet. Digest well my counsels. I shall pray to _le bon Dieu_ for the success of _votre mari_, that is to be. M'sieur, you are a _religieux_?"
"_Ah, oui, oui, mon enfant_--I know all that, but, nevertheless, I am _tout à fait Français_ and I love the French the best of all people in the world."
"And I love the English and the Irish," said Margot.
"Ah well, wait a while, _ma pauvre chérie_. Thou wilt soon see for thyself. When the marriage time comes on--then will happen the rejoicing, and I can dress thee, ah well! I have thy little garments already arranged, but the _avocat_ is waiting. The _dot_ must be settled once and for all on this brilliant _petite_ Comtesse, and then M'sieur, you will tell those good people in Ireland and your own sacred household what good has befallen _la petite_."
"I like it not at all," said Margot to herself. She stood looking disconsolately out of one of the windows and remembered The Desmond and the old place gone to rack and ruin, and hated the idea of being left alone with grand'mère and grandpère of the French nation.
"It troubles me," she thought, "why did I ever leave my little home with my beloved Jacko?"
It is one of the astonishing and also one of the blessed things of life that children of the age of Marguerite St. Juste quickly accommodate themselves to circumstances. She was naturally a very brave little girl, and she had a heart warmer than most, but there was a quiet determination about her, that same determination which had won her way into all the hearts of the good folks at Desmondstown, and this she brought now to her aid.
Her French grandpère was very nice, and she set to work to learn French as quickly as she could, in order to be able to converse with him not only in the English tongue but also in his own. The young new wife said that _la petite_ Comtesse was altogether of the most ravishing. The old Comte said nothing at all, but he looked at _la petite_ out of his twinkling black eyes and tried hard to see her father in that bonny little brown face--in those steadfast, deep, very dark eyes and in those smiling coral lips, but although little Margot had the dark eyes of her father, very dark and very beautiful, she had what was better for herself, the soul of her mother. It was because of that soul that Kathleen Desmond had been so loved and because further she had happened to impart that soul to her little child Margot, who was in consequence more Irish than French.