They gathered together around the table and began to talk in low tones. Esperance had sunk into a chair. Her face was very pale and great blue circles had appeared around her eyes. The discussion seemed to be once more in full swing when Maurice startled everyone by crying, "My God, Esperance is ill!"
The child had fainted, and her head hung limply back. Her golden hair made an aureola of light around the colourless face with its dead white lips.
Maurice raised the child in his arms, and Madame Darbois led him quickly to Esperance's little room where he laid the light form on its little bed. François Darbois moistened her temples quickly with Eau de Cologne. Madame Darbois supported Esperance's head, holding a little ether to her nose. As Maurice looked about the little room, as fresh, as white, as the two pots of marguerites on the mantel-shelf, an indefinable sentiment swelled up within him. Was it a kind of adoration for so much purity? Philippe Renaud had remained in the dining-room where he succeeded in keeping Adhemar, in spite of his efforts to follow the Darbois.
Esperance opened her eyes and seeing beside her only her father and mother, those two beings whom she loved so deeply, so tenderly, she reached out her arms and drew close to her their beloved heads. Maurice had slipped out very quietly. "Papa dearie, Mama beloved, forgive me, it is not my fault," she sobbed.
"Don't cry, my child, now, not a tear," cried Darbois, bending over his little girl. "It is settled, you shall be...." and the word was lost in her little ear.
She went suddenly pink, and raising herself towards him, whispered her reply, "Oh! I thank you! How I love you both! Thank you! Thank you!"
Esperance, left alone with her mother, drank the tea this tender parent brought to her, and the look of health began to come back to her face.
"Then to-morrow, mother dearest, we must go and be registered for the examinations that are soon to be held at the Conservatoire."
"Yes, to-day we must stay with papa, mustn't we? He is so kind!"
The two--mother and daughter--were silent a moment, occupied with the same tender thoughts.
"And now we will persuade him to go out with us, shan't we, mother dear?"
"That will be the very best thing for both of you," agreed Madame Darbois, and she went to make her preparations.