"Well," he said, with a smiling face, "everything is going better than I hoped: Madame d'Estrelle is not a prisoner! She will soon return." He watched his mother closely as he spoke. She uttered a joyful exclamation, but a cloud passed over her brow at the same time. Julien sat down beside her and took both her hands. "Tell me the truth," he said; "the marriage project worries you a little, doesn't it?" "How can you think that I do not long most earnestly for anything that will make you happy? But I thought, that you no longer hoped." "I was entirely resigned, and you said as I did: 'Let us not be discouraged, let us wait. Let us not think too much; perhaps she will forget, and in that case perhaps you would do well to forget also.'" "And you answered: 'I will forget if necessary.' And now I see that you rely upon her more than ever." "But don't you think that I have reason to rejoice. Tell me frankly if I am under an illusion, for you must try to preserve me from it." "Ah! my child, what shall I say to you? She is an adorable creature, and I will adore her with you; but will she be happy with us?" "You know that Monsieur Antoine proposes to deal almost as generously with her as with us, that he will leave her a competence. So that poverty, which terrified you so, is no longer to be dreaded. What is tormenting you now?" "Nothing, if she loves you." "You sigh when you say that. Do you doubt it, pray?" "I have doubted it hitherto, my child. What can you expect? if I am unjust to her, it is the fault of you both. You had no confidence in me, I did not see clearly the birth of your love, I did not follow its different stages, and when you said to me one morning: 'We love each other to distraction,' it seemed to me too sudden to be very serious. It seemed to me that you hardly knew each other!--When I told your father that I loved him, he had been at work three years decorating our house, and I used to see him every day. Several good _partis_ had been proposed to me, but I was very sure that I loved nobody but him. Julie stood in a different position with respect to you. No marriage appropriate to her condition and her ideas about love had ever been within her reach. She was consumed with a craving for love, and was mortally bored without admitting it. She saw you and esteemed you; you deserved it. You attracted her, as it was natural that you should. Peculiar circumstances brought you together, she thought that she loved you passionately. Has she made a mistake? The future will tell us; but she fled just at the moment when she said that she proposed to declare herself, she left you to wait and suffer without sending you a word of consolation. If I have doubted her, you must agree that appearances are against her!"