“Come, calm yourself,” she said in a tone of crushing irony, “or you’ll spoil your complexion for the rest of the evening. Do I complain? do I get excited? And yet whose fault is it, if honor makes it a duty for me to cry ‘Beware!’ to an honest man who wishes to marry me? That Gilberte should get married: that she should be very happy, have many children, darn her husband’s stockings, and skim her _pot-au-feu_,--that is her part in life. Ours, dear mother,--that which you have taught me--is to laugh and have fun, all the time, night and day, till death.” A footman who came in interrupted her. Handing a card to Mme. de Thaller, “The gentleman who gave it to me,” he said, “is in the large parlor.” The baroness had become very pale. “Oh!” she said turning the card between her fingers,--“oh!” Then suddenly she ran out exclaiming, “I’ll be back directly.” An embarrassing, painful silence followed, as it was inevitable that it would, the Baroness de Thaller’s precipitate departure. Mlle. Cesarine had approached the mantel-piece. She was leaning her elbow upon it, her forehead on her hand, all palpitating and excited. Intimidated for, perhaps, the first time in her life, she turned away her great blue eyes, as if afraid that they should betray a reflex of her thoughts. As to M. de Tregars, he remained at his place, not having one whit too much of that power of self-control, which is acquired by a long experience of the world, to conceal his impressions. If he had a fault, it was certainly not self-conceit; but Mlle. de Thaller had been too explicit and too clear to leave him a doubt. All she had said could be comprised in one sentence, “My parents were in hopes that I would become your wife: I had judged you well enough to understand their error. Precisely because I love you I acknowledge myself unworthy of you and I wish you to know that if you had asked my hand,--the hand of a girl who has a dowry of a million--I would have ceased to esteem you.” That such a feeling should have budded and blossomed in Mlle. Cesarine’s soul, withered as it was by vanity, and blunted by pleasure was almost a miracle. It was, at any rate, an astonishing proof of love which she gave; and Marius de Tregars would not have been a man, if he had not been deeply moved by it. Suddenly, “What a miserable wretch I am!” she uttered. “You mean unhappy,” said M. de Tregars gently. “What can you think of my sincerity? You must, doubtless, find it strange, impudent, grotesque.” He lifted his hand in protest; for she gave him no time to put in a word.