My heart beat fast when I reached my mother’s house in Paris. My _petite dame_ was waiting for me downstairs in the _concierge’s_ room. She was very excited to see me looking so well and kissed me with her eyes full of tears of joy. The _concierge_ and family poured forth their compliments. Mme. Guérard went upstairs before me to prepare my mother, and I waited a moment in the kitchen and was hugged by our old servant Marguerite. My sisters both came running in. Jeanne kissed me, then turned me round and examined me. Régina, with her hands behind her back, leaned against the stove gazing at me furiously. “Well, won’t you kiss me, Régina?” I asked, stooping down to her. “No, don’t like you,” she answered. “You’ve went off without me. Don’t like you now.” She turned away brusquely to avoid my kiss and knocked her head against the stove. Finally, Mme. Guérard appeared again, and I went with her. Oh, how repentant I was, and how deeply affected! I knocked gently at the door of the room which was hung with pale blue rep. My mother looked very white, lying in her bed. Her face was thinner, but wonderfully beautiful. She stretched out her arms like two wings and I rushed forward to this loving, white nest. My mother cried silently, as she always did. Then her hands played with my hair, which she let down and combed with her long, taper fingers. Then we asked each other a hundred questions. I wanted to know everything, and she did, too, so that we had the most amusing duet of words, phrases, and kisses. I found that my mother had had a rather severe attack of pleurisy, that she was now getting better, but was not yet well. I, therefore, took up my abode again with her, and for the time being went back to my old bedroom. Mme. Guérard had told me in a letter that my grandmother on my father’s side, had at last agreed to the proposal made by my mother. My father had left a certain sum of money which I was to have on my wedding-day. My mother, at my request, had asked my grandmother to let me have half this sum, and she had at last consented, saying that she should use the interest of the other half, but that the half would still be there for me if I changed my mind, and consented to marry. I was, therefore, quite decided to live my life as I wished, to go away from home, and be quite independent. I adored my mother, but our ideas were quite different. Then, too, my godfather was perfectly odious to me, and for years and years he had been in the habit of lunching and dining with us every day, and of playing whist every evening. He was always hurting my feelings in one way or another. He was an old bachelor, very rich, and with no near relatives. He adored my mother, but she had always refused to marry him. She had put up with him at first because he was a friend of my father. After my father’s death she had put up with him still, because she was then accustomed to him, until finally she quite missed him when he was ill or traveling.