CHAPTER VII.
VICTORY AND DEFEAT.
The next morning, Clotilde was preparing to accompany her mother to the station in the carriage; Monsieur de Lucan, detained at the chateau by a business appointment, was present to take leave of his mother-in-law.

He remarked the thoughtful countenance of the baroness; she was silent, much against her habit, and she cast embarrassed looks upon him; she approached him several times with a constrained smile and confidential manner, but confined herself to addressing to him a few commonplace words.

Availing herself at last of a moment when Clotilde was giving some orders, she leaned out of the carriage-window, and, pressing significantly Monsieur de Lucan's hand: "Be true and faithful to her, sir!" she said.
The carriage started almost immediately, but not before he had had time to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.
The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan's attention at the time, and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville, an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing to light again.

The question at issue was a claim for some public property the effect of which would have been to strip Monsieur de Lucan of a portion of his timbered lands and to curtail materially his patrimonial estate.

He had gained his suit in the lower court, but an appeal was soon to be heard, and he was not without fears as to the final result.