A son?
(eagerly).

Yes, a son.

Where was he?
Parbleu! how should she know ?--for her courage returned a little as the talk went away from the only person of the De Crequy family that she cared about.

But, by dint of some small glasses out of a bottle of Antoine Meyer's, she told him more about the De Crequys than she liked afterwards to remember.
For the exhilaration of the brandy lasted but a very short time, and she came home, as I have said, depressed, with a presentiment of coming evil.
She would not answer Pierre, but cuffed him about in a manner to which the spoilt boy was quite unaccustomed.

His cousin's short, angry words, and sudden withdrawal of confidence,--his mother's unwonted crossness and fault-finding, all made Virginie's kind, gentle treatment, more than ever charming to the lad.