Theresa disappeared, and while the young man was standing in the luggage-room an involuntary impulse of ill-humour arose within him and caused him to tell himself that the two old people, who, nevertheless, loved him so much, really ought not to have been there. This little painful impression, which, at the very moment of his return, showed him the weight of the chain of family tenderness, was renewed as soon as he found himself again face to face with his mother. From the first glance he felt that he was being studied, and, as he was but little accustomed to dissimulation, he believed that he was seen through. The fact was that his own eyes had been changed, as those of a young girl who has become a woman are changed, with one of those imperceptible alterations which reside in a shade of expression. But how could the mother be deceived by them--she who for so many years had watched all the reflections of those dark pupils, and who now grasped within them a depth of intoxicated and fathomless felicity? But to the putting of a question on the subject the poor woman was not equal. Shades of feeling, the principal events in the life of the heart, elude the formulas of phrases, and thence arise the worst misunderstandings. Hubert was very gay during dinner, with a gaiety that was rendered somewhat nervous by the prevision of an approaching difficulty. How would his mother take his going out in the evening? Half-an-hour had not elapsed since leaving table when he rose like one who is about to say good-bye. "You are leaving us?" said Madame Liauran. "Yes, mamma," he replied, with a slight blush on his cheeks; "Emmanuel Deroy has entrusted me with a commission, which is extremely pressing, and which I must execute to-night." "You cannot put it off until to-morrow, and give us your first evening?" asked Madame Castel, who wished to spare her daughter the humiliation of a refusal which she could foresee. "Indeed no, grandmother," he replied, in a tone of childish playfulness; "that would not be courteous to my friend, who has been so kind to me in London."