"She looks as if she didn't believe it," said my mother. "Pray, did you ever ask him?" "No, madam; did you? You are very kind." Mlle. de Bergerac was excited; her cheeks flushed. "In the course of time," said my father, gravely, "the Vicomte proposes to demand your hand." "What is he waiting for?" asked Mlle. de Bergerac, simply. "_Fi donc, mademoiselle!_" cried my mother. "He is waiting for M. de Sorbières to die," said I, who had got this bit of news from my mother's waiting-woman. My father stared at me, half angrily; and then,--"He expects to inherit," he said, boldly. "It's a very fine property." "He would have done better, it seems to me," rejoined Mlle. de Bergerac, after a pause, "to wait till he had actually come into possession of it." "M. de Sorbières," cried my father, "has given him his word a dozen times over. Besides, the Vicomte loves you." Mlle. de Bergerac blushed, with a little smile, and as she did so her eyes fell on mine. I was standing gazing at her as a child gazes at a familiar friend who is presented to him in a new light. She put out her hand and drew me towards her. "The truth comes out of the mouths of children," she said. "Chevalier, does he love me?" "Stuff!" cried the Baronne; "one doesn't: speak to children of such things. A young girl should believe what she's told. I believed my mother when she told me that your brother loved me. He didn't, but I believed it, and as far as I know I'm none the worse for it." For ten days after this I heard nothing more of Mlle. de Bergerac's marriage, and I suppose that, childlike, I ceased to think of what I had already heard. One evening, about midsummer, M. de Treuil came over to supper, and announced that he was about to set out in company with poor M. de Sorbières for some mineral springs in the South, by the use of which the latter hoped to prolong his life. I remember that, while we sat at table, Coquelin was appealed to as an authority upon some topic broached by the Vicomte, on which he found himself at variance with my father. It was the first time, I fancy, that he had been so honored and that his opinions had been deemed worth hearing. The point under discussion must have related to the history of the American War, for Coquelin spoke with the firmness and fulness warranted by personal knowledge. I fancy that he was a little frightened by the sound of his own voice, but he acquitted himself with perfect good grace and success. We all sat attentive; my mother even staring a little, surprised to find in a beggarly pedagogue a perfect beau diseur. My father, as became so great a gentleman, knew by a certain rough instinct when a man had something amusing to say. He leaned back, with his hands in his pockets, listening and paying the poor fellow the tribute of a half-puzzled frown. The Vicomte, like a man of taste, was charmed. He told stories himself, he was a good judge.