But she, who adored her son Gerard, then in his tenth year, and of delicate health, had sacrificed everything to the boy from a kind of maternal chasteness and a superstitious fear that she might lose him should she set another affection and another duty in her life.

And the Marquis, while bowing to her decision, had continued to worship her with his whole soul, ever paying his court as on the first evening when he had seen her, still gallant and faithful after a quarter of a century had passed.

There had never been anything between them, not even the exchange of a kiss.
Seeing how sad she looked, he feared that he might have displeased her, and so he asked: "I should have liked to render you happy, but I didn't know how, and the fault can certainly only rest with me.

Is Gerard giving you any cause for anxiety ?" She shook her head, and then replied: "As long as things remain as they are we cannot complain of them, my friend, since we accepted them." She referred to her son's culpable connection with Baroness Duvillard.
She had ever shown much weakness with regard to that son whom she had had so much trouble to rear, for she alone knew what exhaustion, what racial collapse was hidden behind his proud bearing.

She tolerated his idleness, the apathetic disgust which, man of pleasure that he was, had turned him from the profession of diplomacy as from that of arms.