"My dear girl," exclaimed her mother, "why did you not tell us this before? You would have saved us so much pain, and your other suitors the humiliation of being rejected." "I did not make up my mind until this evening," replied Geraldine. "I do not think I should have accepted him to-morrow. But he was cunning enough to come and propose before I had time for reflection." "You will then authorize me to accept him?" said M. Delisle. "I have accepted him, papa," replied Geraldine. That evening Edouard entered the house with them, and sat talking for some time. When he went away, he had succeeded in having the wedding fixed for that day-month. Geraldine looked pale the next day; and when her mamma noticed it, said that she should go to no more parties, as she wished to look well the day she was married, and expressed a wish to go on excursions into the country instead. Mme Delisle freely acquiesced, Edouard came to dinner, looking much pleased, but still under the influence of the astonishment which had not yet been effaced from his plump and rosy face. "Why, what do you think?" he said toward the end of the dinner, "Alfred de Rougement has left Paris. All his servants were dismissed this morning, and his steward received orders to meet him at Constantinople." "Indeed?" replied Mme Delisle, gravely, while Geraldine turned deadly pale. "But this room is too close for you, my child." "No, mamma," said she, quietly; "but we are forgetting all about our excursions. I should like to go to Versailles to-morrow, and take all the pretty places round Paris in turn." "_Bon!_" cried Edouard; "that suits me. I shall be with you early, for I suppose you will go in the morning?" "I want to breakfast at Versailles," replied Geraldine; "so we must go to bed early." "That I vote to be an admirable proposition. At eleven I will go. But you are going to practice the new variations on _Pastoris_, are you not?" "Yes; and you are going to sing, monsieur," said Geraldine, rising from table. "So come along, and ma and papa can play trictrac all the time." That evening the cousins played and sang together until about ten, when they took tea, which Edouard, good-natured fellow, pretended to like prodigiously, drinking three cups of milk and water under the serious impression that it was the genuine infusion--a practice very common in France, where tea is looked on as dangerous to the nerves. Next day they went to Versailles, breakfasted at the Hôtel de France, visited the interminable galleries of pictures, and dined in Paris at a late hour. The day after they went to Montmorency.