It was strange that, with her knowledge of human nature, her experience, by observation at least, of human passions, she should so little have considered that person’s inclinations who ought to have been first consulted in such a matter. She never seemed to contemplate for an instant that Cerise herself might shrink from the character of the Count, appeal against becoming sick-nurse to the Marquis, or incline to the excessive and objectionable beauty of the Duke. It seemed natural the girl should accept her mother’s choice just as that mother had herself accepted, without even seeing, the chivalrous old Montmirail whom she had so cherished and respected, whose snuff-box stood there under glass on her writing-table, and for whom, though he had been dead more years than she liked to count, she sometimes felt as if she could weep even now. Such a train of reflection gradually brought the Marquise to her own position in life, and a calculation of the advantages and disadvantages attendant on marriage as regarded herself. She could not but know she was in the full meridian of her beauty. Her summer, so to speak, was still in its July; the fruit bright, glowing, and mature; not a leaf yet changed in colour with forewarning of decay. She might take her choice of a dozen noble names whenever she would, and she felt her heart beat while she wondered why this consideration should of late have been so often present to her mind. It could only arise from an anxiety to settle Cerise, she argued with herself; there _could_ be no other reason. Impossible! absurd! No—no—a thousand times—No! She went carefully back over her past life, analysing, with no foolish, romantic, tendencies, but in a keen, impartial spirit, the whole history of her feelings. She acknowledged, with a certain hard triumph, that in her young days she had never loved. Likings, flirtations, passing fancies she had indulged in by hundreds, a dozen at a time, but to true feminine affection her nearest approach had been that sentiment of regard which she entertained for her husband. She did not stop to ask herself if this was love, as women understand the word. And was she to be always invulnerable? Was she indeed incapable of that abstraction, that self-devotion which made the happiness and the misery of nearly all her sex? She _did_ ask herself this question, but she did _not_ answer it; though Pierrot, still watching her out of one eye, must have seen her blush.