The influence of her husband over the count, proved in so many years, prevented the small bourgeoisie from laughing at Madame Moreau, who, in the eyes of the peasants, was really a personage.
Estelle (her name was Estelle) took no more part in the affairs of the stewardship then the wife of a broker does in her husband's affairs at the Bourse.

She even depended on Moreau for the care of the household and their own fortune.

Confident of his _means_, she was a thousand leagues from dreaming that this comfortable existence, which had lasted for seventeen years, could ever be endangered.

And yet, when she heard of the count's determination to restore the magnificent chateau, she felt that her enjoyments were threatened, and she urged her husband to come to the arrangement with Leger about Les Moulineaux, so that they might retire from Presles and live at Isle-Adam.

She had no intention of returning to a position that was more or less that of a servant in presence of her former mistress, who, indeed, would have laughed to see her established in the lodge with all the airs and graces of a woman of the world.
The rancorous enmity which existed between the Reyberts and the Moreaus came from a wound inflicted by Madame de Reybert upon Madame Moreau on the first occasion when the latter assumed precedence over the former on her first arrival at Presles, the wife of the steward being determined not to allow her supremacy to be undermined by a woman nee de Corroy.
Madame de Reybert thereupon reminded, or, perhaps, informed the whole country-side of Madame Moreau's former station.