She gave her hand to her son, and a faint blush rose up out of the past
as it were, and trembled upon her wan cheek. "He was the first friend I
ever had in the world, Paul," she said "the first and the best. He shall
not want, shall he, my son?"
No signs of that emotion in which her daughter-in-law had been indulging
were as yet visible in Madame de Florac's eyes, but, as she spoke,
holding her son's hand in hers, the tears at length overflowed, and with
a sob, her head fell forwards. The impetuous Frenchman flung himself on
his knees before his mother, uttered a hundred words of love and respect
for her, and with tears and sobs of his own called God to witness that
their friend should never want. And so this mother and son embraced each
other, and clung together in a sacred union of love, before which we who
had been admitted as spectators of that scene, stood hushed and
respectful.
That night Laura told me, how, when the ladies left us, the talk had been
entirely about the Colonel and Clive.
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