But the older boy,
with a precocious power of thought, would not rest satisfied with his
mother's assertion that she was perfectly well. He scanned her face
with uneasy forebodings; the exact danger he did not know, but dimly
he felt it threatening in those purple rings about her eyes, in the
deepening hollows under them, and the feverish red that deepened in
her face. If Marie's play began to tire her, his sensitive tact was
quick to discover this, and he would call to his brother:
"Come, Marie! let us run in to breakfast, I am hungry!"
But when they reached the door, he would look back to catch the
expression on his mother's face. She still could find a smile for him,
nay, often there were tears in her eyes when some little thing
revealed her child's exquisite feeling, a too early comprehension of
sorrow.
Mme. Willemsens dressed during the children's early breakfast and game
of play; she was coquettish for her darlings; she wished to be
pleasing in their eyes; for them she would fain be in all things
lovely, a gracious vision, with the charm of some sweet perfume of
which one can never have enough.
She was always dressed in time to hear their lessons, which lasted
from ten till three, with an interval at noon for lunch, the three
taking the meal together in the summer-house.
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