“The best!--Pray don’t say the best!” cried Emilie. “Ah! dear mamma, for me the worst! Let me beseech you not to sacrifice my happiness for ever by such a marriage!” “And what other can you expect, Emilie, in your present circumstances?” “None,” said Emilie. “And here is an establishment--at least an independence for you--and you call it sacrificing your happiness for ever to accept of it!” “Yes,” said Emilie; “because it is offered to me by one whom I can neither love nor esteem. Dearest mamma! can you forget all his former meanness of conduct?” “His present behaviour makes amends for the past,” said Mad. de Coulanges, “and entitles him to my esteem and to yours, and that is sufficient. As to love--well educated girls do not marry for love.” “But they ought not to marry without feeling love, should they?” said Emilie. “Emilie! Emilie!” said her mother, “these are strange ideas that have come into the heads of young women since the Revolution. If you had remained safe in your convent, I should have heard none of this nonsense.” “Perhaps not, mamma,” said Emilie, with a deep sigh. “But should I have been happier?” “A fine question, truly!--How can I tell? But this I can ask you--How can any girl expect to be happy, who abandons the principles in which she was bred up, and forgets her duty to the mother by whom she has been educated--the mother, whose pride, whose delight, whose darling, she has ever been? Oh, Emilie! this is to me worse than all I have ever suffered!” Mad. de Coulanges burst into a passion of tears, and Emilie stood looking at her in silent despair. “Emilie, you cannot deceive me,” cried her mother; “you cannot pretend that it is simply your want of esteem for M. de Brisac which renders you thus obstinately averse to the match. You are in love with another person.” “Not in love,” said Emilie, in a faltering voice. “You cannot deceive me, Emilie--remember all you said to me about the stranger who was our fellow prisoner at the Abbaye. You cannot deny this, Emilie.” “Nor do I, dear mamma,” said Emilie. “I _cannot_ deceive you, indeed I _would_ not; and the best proof that I do not wish to deceive you--that I never attempted it--is, that I told you all I thought and felt about that stranger. I told you that his honourable, brave, and generous conduct towards us, when we were in distress, made an impression upon my heart--that I preferred him to any person I had ever seen--and I told you, my dear mamma, that--”