Aunt Louise had indeed taken them to her ample bosom, and her family of six boys and four girls had been none the less generous in their efforts at hospitality. Emilie had always been inclined to be superior and standoffish with her French relatives, for she liked to remember that her father was an Englishman. She had also when she was quite young been aware of her own illegitimacy and felt aggressively self-conscious that this stood as a barrier between her and her mother’s family. But in actual fact she need not have worried herself on this score. The Riguad family accepted the result of Marie’s courtship with the young Englishman as philosophically as they accepted a bad lambing season or a storm which did damage to the crops.
It was a pity, but there was nothing to be done about it, t
